Amsterdam - May Bank Holiday weekend

May rolled around and lucky for us the last bank holiday weekend coincided with my brother being in Europe on business so we made plans to get together in Amsterdam for the weekend. Alan arrived a day before us and had a chance to wander around before we arrived on the Friday. Friday afternoon was spent having a wander, briefly visiting the Heineken museum and taking a canal cruize. Hennie and I faded by early evening due to the fact that the night before we had driven to Folkestone to cross the channel with the Eurotunnel so that Hennie could get his Schengen visa stamped by France where it had been issued.

Anyway this was a bit of a Laurel and Hardy story as our booking had been messed up and the company had booked us for 9 in the morning instead of 9 at night. Luckily we could get onto the 22:00 hour crossing with the intention of turning straight around and returning to the UK. Unfortunately for us, we got lost, we are going to blame it on bad signposting and missed our return. The next one was only at 2:30 in the morning so after a little sleep in the carpark, we recrossed the channel, drove to the hotel at Gatwick, fell into bed at 4am and woke up at 6am to catch our plane to Amsterdam. Needless to say we were a little shattered by the Friday evening!

Canal Cruize :)

After a full night's sleep we were rearing to go and it had been decided that we would hire bike's on the Saturday and do a little bit of exploring of the countryside north of Amsterdam. All i can say is that I was very glad that the Dutch countryside is so flat as I'm not sure that I would have coped with the 50 or so kilometres that we did if I had to contend with hills. The Waterland was beautiful - lots of wide open spaces with farms and little villages dotted around.

What's the Netherlands without its windmills?

Look at these lovely fella's and they were really friendly.

And then there are the clogs - man size :)

We took refuge in a lovely little pub/restuarant that we found on our way back into Amsterdam when it started raining and the boys thought that it would be fun to put me in the stocks.

A good day was had by all and so it was with slightly tender bums and tired legs that we parked the bikes in the bike garage for the night while we went to get some dinner. They really are geared for the biking lifestyle in Amsterdam!

Sunday saw us venturing out to where there were a lot of old windmills and a bit of history, after doing a little shopping. Weather was not the best, but there was still a lot to see.

And as they say in the classics, all good things must come to an end so on Monday morning we dropped Alan off at the airport so he could return to SA and Hennie and I jumped in a car that we had hired and did a little bit more exploring of the Netherlands :)