A 8 hour time difference between Amsterdam and Sydney and then a 9 hour difference between Southampton and Sydney is going to play havoc with this travel blog. It is set by the app and I have no control over which date it is going to display. The best I can do is begin each blog with the day it covers …. So this is Friday night the 2nd and Saturday the 3rd, beginning in Amsterdam and ending in Southampton.

You know those children's educational toys, that are a large ball with different shaped holes around them? The child has plastic shapes that match the holes and they have to figure out which hole to push it through. Well, the adult equivalent is the overhead locker on an aircraft. Our advice is to get on board early, stow your bags and then sit back and watch how the late arrivals try to insert their bits and pieces into impossible shapes and sizes. Spatial discrimination is a lost art or science for most.

We arrived in Amsterdam after 33 hours in transit and around 5 hours of catnaps. As I reported in the last blog, we hit the ground running and spent the day in Amsterdam, still without any sleep. After returning to our hotel around 2:30pm, to book in, we showered, changed and headed back to the airport to catch the train into the city for a second time. Here we experienced our first and hopefully last "rip off". We had decided to have dinner at "Mossel en (&) Gin" which is in Westerpark. Ches's hip is barely going to last till her surgery in August, and having walked some 13,000 steps that morning, she wasn't up for the walk to Westerpark. Out front of the central station, there was no sign of a taxi rank, so we wandered into a side street looking for a taxi. A guy pulled over and enquired "taxi?" We said yes, the name of the restaurant and hopped in. As he drove off toward Westerpark, he remarked, "It will be 35 euros, it is a fixed price in Amsterdam city". We knew immediately we were being ripped off, however too tired to argue and hop out. Ches did however make sure he knew, that we knew, he was a liar and cheat. It was barely 5 minutes to the restaurant.

A bleak and windy day suddenly turned into a summer's day. At 6:30, the sun came out and the breeze dropped. Almost everyone in Amsterdam under the age of 30 came out to lie around in the park, BBQs sprung up and kids on bicycles were everywhere.

We found our restaurant and settled in for Shrimp Croquettes, Mussels, fries with Gin Mayonnaise and Gin and Tonics. When in Bruges some years ago, we had discovered "moules and frites" and figured that the Netherlands would also have them. We had a wonderful young waitress who steered us in the right direction. Our instinct was to have the traditional "moules and frites", however she talked us into having them in Roquefort. Fantastic. The mayonnaise came in a tube that they produce at the restaurant. They distil their own gin and mix it in the mayonnaise; also fantastic. Ches had a Ginger Gin and I, an IPA beer. Having told the waitress about the taxi driver ripping us off, she returned later with the biggest bowl of Watermelon Gin …. on the house.

One of the other waiters was a young guy from Brisbane. His mother is Dutch and she was so homesick seven years ago, that they moved here. He said that he had found it a far better town to grow up in than Brisbane. He at least admitted that summer was a bare two months, and the rest of the year was cold and wet. After being in Brisbane several weeks ago, where a local declared that in Queensland there were only two seasons "Summer and night time", I'm not convinced that Amsterdam is the place to live. Holiday certainly, but not live.

When we left, she directed us to a bus stop. The bus returned us to the station, and the driver, observing that our train ticket didn't work on the bus, just waved us onboard. And so we returned to the station, train to the airport and the shuttle back to the hotel.

Actually, that was a bun fight. The shuttle was running late. It runs every half hour from 5.00 am till midnight. There was nowhere for it to pull in to its normal slot and there were twice as many people waiting for it as there were seats. Ches's hip made a miraculous recovery, she sprint limped down the road to push her way onboard. Two aussie men here on a 5 week training course offered her thier seat. Among other things, they recommended that we take a bus trip to Haarlem while here. We've added it to our "To Do" list for mid-July.

Back at the hotel at 10:00 pm, Ches says that by the time she went to the bathroom and returned, I was already asleep. That was 44 hours with 5 hours of "catnaps", so I wasn't surprised. I was surprised however, to wake up at 3am. That's right, the colts are in the middle of their three games back at Eastwood, so I had to check the scores on my app. I did get back to sleep, and we managed to make it through too around 8:00.

We had decided to pack our bags and check out by 9:30. Our luggage in storage, we took the shuttle to the airport and the train into town. Unfortunately, the restaurant we had chosen for breakfast was packed and we only had an hour and a bit to eat before we joined a canal cruise at noon. We had passed a restaurant in the main street the day before, with a sign saying "Apple Pancakes". Both Ches and I remember having Dutch Apple and Bacon pancakes at Mothers Cellar up at Kings Cross in the early 70s. The ones here were pretty mediocre. Worse still, the waiter stood next to our table and spruiked the passing crowds for the entire meal.

Our canal cruise was a vast improvement. A beautiful old boat, interesting commentary from a South African guide and wine and cheese as we worked our way around some of the canals for an hour.

When the guide was explaining the introduction of window taxes, I remembered that we had seen many buildings in the UK where the windows had been bricked up centuries ago. The owners responded to the introduction of window taxes by removing them and I suggested to Ches that perhaps it was William 111 (William of Orange, when he became the English King.) Yup, that's where it began. Perhaps we should introduce a garage/cc tax. Based on the power of a vehicle and the number of parking space per residence, that would see the residents of the Eastern Suburbs trying to park on the street and converting the garages into living space.

We passed the Waldorf Astoria. It was put together by buying up every apartment in a row of houses. The average price was E150,000.00. We can book a room for the night before our canal cruise in July for $AUD2,751.20. When it was completed, guests complained of the smell coming from the coffee shop on the other side of the canal. Get with the programme folks! A coffee shop in Amsterdam sells "weed", consumed on the premises. They bought the coffee shop and converted it into a restaurant and named it "SNOB". It's a hamburger restaurant.

It was then back to the hotel, collect our bags and back to the airport for our flight to Southampton.

We had stopped over in Amsterdam because we had elected to avoid Heathrow. Flying in to Heathrow previously, we discovered that it took several hours to clear the airport and then another hour to get to the car rental and several hours getting out of London and the motorway to Southampton. Most of a day lost in there. As we don't need a rental car till this Thursday, it's easier to wait in Amsterdam till a "city hopper" flight is scheduled.

Saturday afternoon is when around fifteen flights leave Amsterdam in the space of an hour, all to regional UK airports. Only around 100 passengers per flight in small aircraft, however all 1,500 people in the one boarding lounge and buses to transport us to the other side of the airport where we board the aircraft from the tarmac.

An uneventful flight other than having a baby suffering discomfort when landing and setting off two other babies in a wailing competition. We also could see that there was a smash on the motorway into Southampton, and suspected that Drew and Keith might be caught up in it. They had been on the fringe of it, however only 5 min late in meeting us.

After a lovely sunny day in Amsterdam we were greeted with an equally sunny day in Southampton with the sunset well after 10pm.