Soon we were heading off again, this time on a road trip through Europe. We had been planning to leave earlier in the year but events happened that made this change, so we were now doing a shortened version of what we originally thought. As a birthday treat my children had treated me to a holiday in Greece, at the places the Mama Mia movie had been filmed. So basically we were heading there but making it up as we go, booking hotels just the night before, thank goodness for the Internet.
We sailed from Newcastle on a Sunday night. Getting onto the ferry was straight forward and once we were parked we headed for our cabin. It was tiny, more like a cell, maybe because it had no window but it did the job giving us somewhere to rest for the night.
We ventured out to watch the ferry leave the port and then set off to explore the boat but oh boy, as soon as we got out into the sea I could really feel the movement. Quickly we headed back to the cabin as I find lying down helps with sea sickness, it was a very early night for us. On our short stint on the decks though we saw that there were loads of groups of young men drinking away, who we guessed were stag dos from the Netherlands heading back home. There were also loads of youth groups milling and at times running around.
After a decent nights sleep we found ourselves in The Netherlands, this is the part I was dreading, driving abroad, not that I was going to be doing any of it, that was David's job. David has driven abroad before, so has driven on the wrong side but we had hired a car then, so at least the steering wheel was in the right place. However, he managed well and very soon we were at our hotel which was just outside Breukelen.
We chose this hotel as it had easy access to Amsterdam and Utrecht by train and it meant we didn't have to try and drive into a city so early on into our journey. We were lucky as it was a lovely hotel and after checking in we were soon on a train to Utrecht. The rail service to Utrecht and Amsterdam
from Breukelen ran very regularly, was relatively cheap and the tickets were easily bought using a
self service machine which you can change so the instructions are in English.
Utrecht is lovely , it was very busy probably because it was May Day Monday. We bought some local cuisine, in Scotland we would say, " a poke of chips" and sauntered through the town. It has lovely old buildings, cobbled streets and people on bikes everywhere.
I loved the name of this cafe.
We walked along the canal which had small boats motoring up and down it, you could also hire a boat to tootle down it on your own. We saw two young ladies doing it, who were having a bit of problems with their steering!
The entrance to the cafe had these tall stone figures as their columns
Another view of the canal with the narrow buildings lining it. While in Utrecht we wandered into an open courtyard garden area which was planted up mainly with tulips. As we left we could see the cutest little ginger kitten sat on a wall beside the entrance way. As we were walking towards it to leave, a family were walking towards us to enter. The young teenage son in the family went to stroke it, gently putting his hand up to it. The kitten as they do looked all sweet and put its little head
forward meekly then out of nowhere grabbed his arm with both paws and starting snarling like a demented beast. Funny to see, made me giggle!
Breukelen really was nice to wander around it had a nice relaxed feel, some interesting shops and you can do a tour under the city which unfortunately was sold out when we were there but we may go back and visit it on our journey home.
In the evening we went for a walk around Breukelen which also is worth exploring. There are lots of lovely walks in the area and cycle ways which people of all ages seemed to be using. We walked along the canal path and saw lots of barges make their way up. The barges were huge and carried a variety of things but mainly it was coal we saw being transported.
In the centre of Breukelen was a lovely park area which just so happens to have a geocache in it. So I settled down on a park bench while David went a hunting for it. It was lovely, calm and serene and I was enjoying just sitting, then David appeared with the geocache to show me how big it was ! I must admit I wondered how such a thing could be hidden , but I won't tell, might spoil it for others.
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