Today was a rather early wake up of 5.30am - a horrible shock to the system. Uncle Albert drove us to Hoogeveen where we caught the train to Amsterdam airport. Unfortunately the train didn't have any luggage storage area so poor Brett had to lift our 20kg suitcases up above his head into the baggage shelf. Somehow I suspect they aren't really designed for suitcases as heavy as ours. Upon arriving at Amsterdam airport we stood in the Easy Jet queue for an ete...

Today was our final day of our road trip around Western Europe. We enjoyed a yummy breakfast at the hotel (including Dutch chocolate hail on biscotti's - yum!) and set off for Utrecht which was the closest town to where we were staying. We had a bit of a look around the town, wandering around the streets and paths following the canals. Unfortunately all the shops were shut as it was a Sunday. Coming from NZ where everything is always open it was quite strange a...

We had a rather poor night's sleep in Antwerp as there was some big and loud motor thing in a neighbouring factory that turned on and off all night. Oh well, it settled our decision on whether or not we'd stay another night and we could also get a head start on the day. We dressed up warmly not knowing that the weather would improve, and we'd end up looking silly in jeans when most were wearing shorts. See - there's wisdom in sleeping in! My coffee still hadn't...

Today's destination to explore: Bruges. We started our day with a 40 minute walk into town from our hotel then started the Lonely Planet recommended self-guided walking tour around historic Bruges. Bruges is a very picturesque, medieval town on the west side of Belgium that has been described as the Venice of the North. We'd heard good things about Bruges from friends and we were glad not to be disappointed :) While the town in quite touristy it definitely is...

This morning, we packed up in Luxembourg, paid the cheapest proper bill for camping so far - €13 - and headed for Brussels (I say "proper bill" because we paid €10.50 in Oberstdorf, Germany for one night, one person, two tents due to a small language mix up). The trip to Brussels was mostly fine, but we had to fight our way through a bit of traffic near the end. We were already sensing a disturbance in the force on the way to the campsite, and when we got ...