Friday 01-08 - Caravan park

We unwillingly moved to the train station. We would part ways with Dani until we met in London. We had hoped to take a nice criossant and coffee breakfast but the long queues for tickets sapped all our time. Before we knew it, it was time for Dani to check in. We hugged farwell, reassuring ourselves it was only a week until we were reunited.

We took the 4 hour train from Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam. I had take away wok noodles for lunch at Brusels stations then Got on the Amstel train with everyone else. For some reason the Amsterdam train was a no go today and we had to switch at Amstel.



Our original booking in Amsterdam was for the downtown Flying Pig. Two different people had recommended the place to us. We booked all the way back in London. In Italy we had to change around a bunch of our bookings and needed to get to Amsterdam 2 days earlier. The pig had no openings so we booked at a place described by reviewers as far away and in a caravan park. We thought, oh well, it was the best we could get at the time.

Amsterdam was lovely liked I remembered it was. The canals and the old buildings sat quietly, watching the people rush by. The rainbow flags hung up everywhere and flapping in the wind reminded the city that it was gay pride festival that weekend. On arrival Amsterdam central we popped in to the pig 5 minutes away to see if they had any beds. They didn't and said we could book for tomorrow, we would have to check in the morning. So we found a net café to get directions to the far away place. We ended up taking a taxi. We passed freeways and cows. The taxi driver looked scary. He used broken English is ask us ¨what are you here for, an reason¨.
We replied that we were travelling.
¨You´re not those homos are you?¨
¨No,we´re just travelling around¨
We sat in silence for the rest of the trip.

50 euro later we arrived at a lake side campsite. It was a bizarre place. Bizarre Dutch Barry Manelow type music piping outside. Heart lace trimmings on the caravan windows. On the grass outside stands a life sized plastic giraffe and elephant. It was like being in a dream.







Josh was put out, he seemed very agitated. Especially since the taxi was expensive and we couldn't cancel the second night to get our money back. I was also tired and grumpy. So we decided to use the night to catch up on blogs and photos and set out early tomorrow to find a hostel.