253 Day 12: Show me the way to go home / “To travel is to live.”
Or “What I have learnt today.”
1. That if you pay £32 for a room, you should not be surprised if said room is pretty much wall-to-wall bed with paper thin sheets and smells of student.
252. Day 11: Looking a little pail…
“You must do the Night Watchman’s walk,” said CallMeGeorge, our student waiter. “It starts just there at 8 o’clock and it’s free.” And so we did.
251. Day 10: Ribe
You’ll be relieved to hear that we managed to leave Hamburg with all limbs and digits intact. Close call though, I reckon.
Now, we’re a little baffled. We’ve been in Ribe for a whole day and no one has yet tried to explain to us how to work the toilet. There’s not even a manual!
249. Days 7 and 8: Dutch Courage.
So, Amsterdam.
We’ve been to Amsterdam once before, just for a daytrip when the children were children. We did a canal tour, we visited Anne Frank’s house and we wondered at the bicycles. I particularly remember being awestruck by someone carrying a double bass on a bike.
In my memory, Amsterdam was a charming place and I was looking forward to exploring it at a more leisurely pace.
248. Day 6: A little mouse with clogs on…
There’s an episode of Cabin Pressure – I am a bit obsessed with Cabin Pressure – where Douglas and Martin are trying to make the time pass quicker by taking turns to think of people who are not evil but have evil sounding names: Russell Crowe, Calista Flockhart, Heston Blumenthal.
To this list, we would like to add Hester Klute, the owner of our current AirBnB. Don’t you think she sounds evil?
247. Day 5: Another suitcase in another hall
Have spent the day in Haarlem, arriving this evening in Amsterdam. Just too darned tired with all that globetrotting (thanks DH) to blog tonight. So here’s a few photos from Haarlem:
246. Day 4: The Hague
I do realise that this is akin to saying that Italians like pasta or that German trains run on time but I can no longer resist stating the bleeding obvious. Blooming heck- the bikes!
245 Day 3: Initial impressions
Today’s guide is
Hermann who weaves us through the city’s history as
Expertly as Hans navigates the very low bridges:
Heads down, thumbs up.
Also, much Art –
Girl with a pearl, etc.
Up we climb to our third floor apartment on a staircase designed by
Escher.
244 Day 2: Jobs for the Boys?
Should you be looking for careers advice, Benedict is your man. Not only is he weaving our boat under the low bridges, around the dumped bicycles and past other boats but he is also telling us about Ghent and its history. In the course of which he has mentioned a few occupations readily available to anyone with a time machine.
242. Day 1. And in the morning, I’ll be making waffles…
Well, actually eating, not making, courtesy of the lovely Pieter and Ziggy – the first hosts of this year’s Grand Tour. On which basis this is, so far, our favourite watering hole.
The Jelly Chronicles 