Amsterdam!

So here's a tonne of photos from Amsterdam. The weekend mainly consisted of a lot of walking around, catching up with my friend Ang, food, drink, enjoying the abundance of sunshine, and Luke using the public urinals... over and over and over again. Apparently the novelty doesn't wear off.
This first photo if of the old city gate. Initially when the city was built and planned it had a big wall around it (as lots of places did, to stop nasty invaders getting in), and there's bits and pieces of it scattered around. Its now being used as a cafe/restaurant in the Neumarkt square.


When we first arrived and had met up with Ang, we headed to our hostel to drop off our stuff, and it was right near the Neumarkt square, and there was a market there... mainly food and flowers. The photo below is of a stall filled with mushrooms.


Here's the public urinals Luke was obsessed with.
Once we'd had some lunch what we'd planned to do is head straight over to Anne Frank's house, because that's one of the things we definitely wanted to see while we were there. When we got there, the line to get in was soooo long, it went all the way down the street, around the corner, and half way down the next block. We didnt want to waste our time, so instead we bought a ticket that takes you on a city tour on the canal boats - like the hop-on-hop-off buses that you get in every main city anywhere. It was a lot slower than a bus, but there were tables so we bought ourselves some lunch and settled in for a trip round the city, some food, and lots of photos. The houses are really interesting - all very thin and very tall. Apparently, when the city was being built, they would only sell plots of a width of 5.5 m, I think so that more people could have water views. Even if it was toilet water - all the houseboats (and there's a good few thousand) have toilets that empty straight into the canals. The smallest house in Amsterdam has a width of only 2.2m. Crazy.





Here's me and Ang on the canal boat.






The little streets in Amsterdam are just crammed with windows, and most windows are crammed with detail. This obviously very old candlabra I liked. The taxidermy below is a bit freaky - though not as freaky as the Frankenstein creations we saw in Munich.

This is a bit gross (sorry mum) but you must admit, for Amsterdam, my photos are very censored. We stopped to get some chips, and only afterwards did we notice the mascot. Suddenly cheese sauce wasnt so appealing.
This is the national monument. I know nothing about it, because there were no signs in English.
By about 6pm we were stuffed, so we sat for a while in a streetside restaurant, drank beer, and watched people and the sun both start to become scarcer. It was nice just chatting, and when it became cold enough, we moved inside and ordered some food.


This I've put in to follow on from one of the signs in Munich. Although he does his shopping in Germany, apparently Amsterdam is where Luke belongs.

I wanted to get a photo of clogs, tulips, and a windmill while we were there.... this photo took about an hours worth of walking to get. At least it was a nice day.
We saw this family bike in one of the squares and thought it was worth a photo.
Overall, Amsterdam was fun, but not a place I feel the need to go back to. Nice for a weekend away though.

Long weeked = Road trip!

So here we are in the car again! I dont know why I feel obliged to take a photo of us sitting in the car as we get to where we're going, but here we are. This somehow proves we went, and reminds you all what we look like. Well, what Luke looks like, and the right half of my face.
Soooo, as I mentioned in the title, we've been working awfully hard in order to have a lovely 4 day long weekend to go away in, and we decided to do a random road trip. The way we decided was rather immature, I made one of those origami foldy things that kids play with (I should have taken a photo of that!) and it had a bunch of random directions in it... and we ended up going east. We had a lovely drive (I got to wear my sunnies again!) through the New Forest, which is the first pic here...


This door is of Titchfield Abbey - just another English Heritage ruin, but had some pretty cool gargoyles - I've put a photo in of the, but they were pretty high up so it was tricky getting a good shot.




After Titchfield, we carried on East and found ourselves at Porchester castle. You can start to see all the chalk cliffs at this point, but there's better photos of that later on. There's not a whole lot I can tell you about these ruins. They're cool to look around in, but in terms of historical placings, my brain is a sieve.


We next headed onto a town called Arundel. It wasnt on the Eastern coastal route, but we were driving along on the motorway, and Luke spotted the mother of all Castles on the horizon, so we drove over to it. And it was worth it - really pretty town. The photo below is the view we had from the pub we had lunch in.


Day two - we stayed the night in Eastbourne and the next day got our bikes out and headed to the imaginatively named 'beachy head'. It had a beach on it. And we spent most of the morning riding our bikes, pushing them up massive hills, and avoiding sheep, cows, and lots of poo.

These are the chalk cliffs that Dover is famous for - we're not quite at Dover yet though. That's also the start of the hill that the photo above this one was taken from. Below is more hills and cliffs. Also, a bit of mist thrown in for good measure. It was a bit spooky when you're up on the top, isolated, and surrounded by mist. In a good way.

Here's a photo of Luke 'fixing the bikes' on the roof racks. Whether mounting the car was completely necessary, i'm not sure, but he assures me it was.
This tree made me laugh. Evidence of the stiff nature of the breeze we were fighting.
After we'd finished at the sandless beach, we drove over to the South Downs Way, which is a national trail (footpath/bridleway) that works its way through rolling green hills along most of the south coast. The reason why we went was because there is a giant man, ' the long man of wilmington', carved into one of the hills.... we walked around those hills for about 2 hours looking for him, but eventually just gave up, and then spotted him as we drove away.... we'd been walking around on the top of the hill he was on. The map was very misleading. Or even wrong, yes, I'd go so far as to say that the map was wrong. Definitely.

Next stop on the tour was a town called Battle, about 10 miles north of Hastings, which was where the battle of Hastings in 1066 was actually fought. The rolling green hills, lanscaped gardens and wildflowers dont really capture the violence of battle, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.
After Battle we drove straight through to Dover, and picked a B&B that was reviewed in my lonely planet guide. One thing it specifically mentions is that it 'does not cater to children'. I would like to know who the Raggedy Anne doll on the bed, and the dolls house on the landing was for.
Final port of call was Dover castle, and it was well worth the visit. There's a 13th century keep, which unfortunately was closed when we were there, but was impressive to look at none the less, walks around the battlements, stunning views over Dover harbour, but the best bits were the secret wartime tunnels, and the medieval tunnels, buried in the giant hillside under the castle.
The secret wartime tunnels were first built by Napoleon to house troops that were stationed there, in preparation for invasion of france, and was rebuilt, expanded and reused in the second world war. It housed a hospital, and operation command post for much of the war, and one of the most famous operations run from there was 'Operation Dynamo', where 338,000 stranded troops were rescued from Dunkirk when the advancing German army had trapped them.
The tunnels themselves are quite claustrophobic, and they've recreated the scene well, with genuine furniture and equipment used at the time, so it looks genuine, it sounds genuine with air raid sirens and bomb blasts, and even smells genuine. The lighting flickers and everything during attacks. Very cool.
The medieval tunnels were also interesting, but not exhibited in the same way at all - they just are as you find them. Fun to explore though, lots of cramped spiral staircases, secret doors and murder holes and stuff. The tours through the whole complex are pretty cool too.

This was a suit of armour available for sale in the gift shop. Apprently in medieval times it was quite normal to have an 8 pack, AND a pot belly.
After Dover Castle was done we had to high tail it back to Bournemouth, so that's the end of the long weekend. In 2 weeks we're going to Amsterdam though, so I'll have some more pics then!