My plan to leave Krakow and Hayley with a dry face proved unsuccessful. I woke Hayley as I was about to leave and we both started crying, and as much as it tore my heart out to leave my little girl alone again, I had a plane to Amsterdam to catch. So with heavy heart I headed off. As I walked to the train station to catch a train to the international airport, I realised that because of my overwhelming sadness last night, I'd forgotten to double-check my travel...

After booking our train tickets for tomorrow (mine to Paris, Hayley's to Salzburg) I tried for the second time to withdraw money from an ATM, with no luck. I rang the NAB in Australia twice only to discover on the second call (after a total of forty minutes on hold, (I'd hate to be paying my phone bill) that the money I'd transferred into the account before I left still hadn't come through - looks as though my trip to Europe might be on Hayley. We spent some tim...

We caught a local bus to Volendam a small fishing village described by Floor and Michel as a typical traditional Dutch village. The buildings here were very different to those in Amsterdam, while still being narrow their windows are very different. All have a large window on the ground floor with cream or white lace or sheer curtains and decorations (plants/ornaments) on the sill. Now when I say all of them were like this you might be thinking that there had to b...

Flying over Holland was amazing, it really is flat. Apart from the man-made dikes, there isn't the slightest bump on the landscape. (I've wondered since who decided it would be a good idea to build on this low lying land, so low in fact that huge contour banks were constructed to surround the land to stop it getting flooded...seems like the perfect place to start a country?) Unlike flying into Brisbane with its coloured rooftops, every roof in every town we flew ...