Woke at 5am Europe time, so wrote first
blog entry. Saw Julia’s Facebook post on the brilliant flower parade in
Amsterdam yesterday; GirlRob doubly jealous she hadn’t known about the event
before making travel bookings.
Breakfast turned out to be included in price, delicious light corn yellow bread, and muesli with fresh berries. The "House Smoothie" had a hint of thyme. Shuttle bus to airport cost €18 so yesterday’s taxi was not overpriced. Sitting alone in the lounge we gradually became aware we'd been told wrong gate number - rushed with all the luggage to new gate only to find plane was late arriving, with subsequent push back for cleaning, restocking and loading baggage. Stood in line in hot crowded corridor for an hour past boarding time, everyone wilting, kids fretting, passengers anxious about missing connections. Finally boarded KLM to Amsterdam; felt we'd hardly settled when arrived in The Netherlands an hour later (yay - a new country!!) Interesting airport, dark and spacious, interesting shops, and tulip souvenirs of every description. Had a tasty tuna roll for late lunch before collecting our Avis hire car, a manual (grrr…) Citroen. Attached our Garmin, but for some reason it wouldn’t launch - fortunately we had Sat Nav on board. Avis staff set it up in English and we had no trouble following it down to Lisse (and then so glad we'd downloaded offline maps of all our countries on Pocket Earth so we could find our way to Noordwijk from there). BoyRob was happy with the briefness of the journey; after two years full time driving in Australia, he finds the first drive in a strange vehicle in the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, is always “fraught” - plus the Citroen has the gear change shift with the right hand as well. Too much to adjust to, too soon, he reckoned.
Breakfast turned out to be included in price, delicious light corn yellow bread, and muesli with fresh berries. The "House Smoothie" had a hint of thyme. Shuttle bus to airport cost €18 so yesterday’s taxi was not overpriced. Sitting alone in the lounge we gradually became aware we'd been told wrong gate number - rushed with all the luggage to new gate only to find plane was late arriving, with subsequent push back for cleaning, restocking and loading baggage. Stood in line in hot crowded corridor for an hour past boarding time, everyone wilting, kids fretting, passengers anxious about missing connections. Finally boarded KLM to Amsterdam; felt we'd hardly settled when arrived in The Netherlands an hour later (yay - a new country!!) Interesting airport, dark and spacious, interesting shops, and tulip souvenirs of every description. Had a tasty tuna roll for late lunch before collecting our Avis hire car, a manual (grrr…) Citroen. Attached our Garmin, but for some reason it wouldn’t launch - fortunately we had Sat Nav on board. Avis staff set it up in English and we had no trouble following it down to Lisse (and then so glad we'd downloaded offline maps of all our countries on Pocket Earth so we could find our way to Noordwijk from there). BoyRob was happy with the briefness of the journey; after two years full time driving in Australia, he finds the first drive in a strange vehicle in the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, is always “fraught” - plus the Citroen has the gear change shift with the right hand as well. Too much to adjust to, too soon, he reckoned.
The glimpses of the Netherlands channels, canal boats, windmills, long long fields of bright tulips, people cycling everywhere (cars must give way!) was tantalising – can’t wait to get out amongst it tomorrow. Arrived at Topparken on Noordwijk Dunes on the North Sea (voted 13th most beautiful beach in the world by National Geographic) Picked up our carry bag of towels and 1 roll of toilet paper at reception, and found our “chalet” (not!) as well as a note from Julia and Eskil to say they had booked in to the caravan park side, and were making us a “Welcome to Europe” dinner!! Yay!! It was so good to see them again, tanned and slender, as healthy as ever (loved their Moroccan shoes). Swapped many travel stories over Spanish champagne, French ePoisses cheese, Comfit de Canard (which amazingly came out of a can!) Caught up on the news of one another’s families, and friends in common. A most pleasant evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment