After a lovely Bruges visit we boarded the 1pm train to Amsterdam. We arrived around 5pm and hopped on a tram to Liedensplein. We checked into our prison cell sized hotel room with two mini beds and hit the streets of Amsterdam. We had a dinner along the river (which was lovely) and then ventured out to check out the town. We, of course, hit up the obligatory walk through the red light district, gotta check it out right? We made our way back to our area after a...

Brugge is a small but beautiful little medieval town to the West of Brussels made infamous by the film "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell. I saw it once, but pretty sure I slept through most of it. We decided to take a look, not because of the movie or because we had any particular interest in it; but rather because reasonable accommodation for Sat night in Amsterdam was impossible to find. And, what a nice surprise it turned out to be. It is crowded with tourists an...

One last tube trip in the big city took us to St Pancras station where we had bid adieu to Linda and the UK and hopped on the Eurostar bound for the mainland. It's been a while since I have experienced the tingle of excitement that comes with jumping on a train in one country knowing that a few short hours later you will be deposited in another country where they speak another language and have another culture. The Eurostar is exactly such a train; it's pretty ba...

Living the London dream continues! Today we met a great old college friend of mine, Linda, and had another awesome day exploring the city. After dropping our gear at her apt in Finsbury Park in Nth London; we hopped the tube down to Borough Market to have a look around and get a little lunch. We saw some amazing looking stuff but settled on a good ol' fashioned curry. Also, visited an amazing cheese shop right up the street from the place where the infamous shoot...

Our trip to London from New Romney began with a 5 am wake up call and a swift departure with Markku under a still dark sky. We decided to ride with him to work and take the train from there to be able to get a full day in London and to save a few £ in train fare. His commute is 90 minutes or longer, depending on traffic, 4 days a week (poor b******; I know!) but we made the 7:10 train north into the city from Chessington and before long had fueled up on coffee, ...