Amsterdam

We left the Champagne region in rain and with a temperature of 14 degrees. Still, we were thankful that several days had passed since we drove through the south of France where the terrible floods have been, so we were long gone by the time they struck.

The first part of our journey was more little tiny roads and cute villages. But as we moved through Belgium and into Holland we found ourselves on huge motorways as they do not have toll roads everywhere like the French, and we had only asked to avoid toll roads.


Our first sight of windmills was a little disappointing, not quite what we had imagined at all.


When we did see a traditional one, it was dwarfed by some new ones.

We had programmed the GPS to take us to the airport. We drove all around the airport area seeing only the Sheraton and the Hilton, not the Etap we were looking for. Without realizing it we ended up back on the motorway, going through a tunnel heading for the city centre, wondering what had gone wrong. However, we took the next exit, and there was our hotel peeping out at us from among the trees! It had a free shuttle to the airport and there was a train from there direct to Amsterdam central.


We spent a day exploring the city, started off with an hour-long cruise around the canals which was really informative. Anne Frank's house, which is now a museum, was very special. Amazing the number of people there from many different parts of the world. But then her diary has been translated into more than 70 languages.


The city, besides being full of bicycles, was also very orange. And there were soccer balls decorating shops and bars wherever you looked. Not hard to guess the colour of Holland's football team!

The photo was taken on the main street of the red light district, near the most popular corner, a pub showing all the games live!

;-) Ann-a-Gram