Day 6 – April 21 Thursday

A wake-up call at 4.15am this morning for a departure time of 5.30am.  We had a quick shower & a breakfast box before finally meeting all of our fellow travellers for the first time at the bus, all 23 of us in a forty seater bus so there is plenty of room to spread out.  We wound our way through the labyrinth of London streets, thankfully fairly empty at this time of the morning.  I’m very glad I’m not driving the bus, it is so tight in some of these streets.  We had an uneventful trip to Dover & the famous white cliffs, where we walked onto the P&O ferry bound for Calais in France.  The English Channel was as calm as Lake Burley Griffin, no wind & very flat, only taking 90 minutes to cross over.  The visibility was a bit poor with a light sea mist/smog.

We boarded our new bus in Calais & headed out along the freeway through rural France, past Dunkirk, then over the border into Belgium.  The rural farms are very green with a few cows, sheep & houses scattered around.  After a few hours we bypassed Brussels & Antwerp & were in Holland where we stopped for lunch at a roadside cafe.  The food was fabulous, a smorgasbord of fresh food to choose from, it was all very nice & I didn’t hear anyone complain.  We had just started out again when not more than a kilometre down the freeway a truck had just rolled & was blocking traffic in both directions.  As we were stuck in the traffic about 200 metres from the accident an ambulance came past, then the police shortly after.  The truck driver was lying on the ground being tended to as we crawled past.  The rest of the trip was without incident & we pulled into a very nice 5 star Hotel Movenpick, right on the Rhine River near the centre of Amsterdam.

After settling into our room we went for a quick walk before dinner, first along the riverbank past all of the moored Rhine/Danube riverboats before turning across into the old part of Amsterdam.  This part of the old town has narrow streets, canals, old narrow buildings & coffee shops that sell hashish, the smell is very noticeable.  The number of people riding bicycles is amazing, they are absolutely everywhere, young, old, they even use barges as bicycle storage for workers in the city.  We just made it back to the Hotel before 7 for a quick change then drinks & dinner.  We saw a cruise ship departing the wharf just next to our hotel while having a superb dinner.

I have finally managed to connect to some free internet so have caught up on a few emails, etc.