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 time in Vondel Park, the main park in Amsterdam, reading and watching people ride past on their bikes and walking with babies in prams, then headed back to the hostel. We stopped in at a cheese shop to buy some cheeses and salami for our expedition in the afternoon and some bread at a bakery and a tompouche that Michel and Floor told me was a pretty typical Dutch sweet...turns out it was just plain old vanilla slice, and as neither Hayley or I are fond of custard we enjoyed the pastry and pink icing and the filling went in the bin.

We also bought a bottle of wine from the supermarket...incredibly there was a section dedicated to Australian wines - Lindemans, Jacobs Creek, Rawson's Retreat, Penfolds and Rosemount Estate were all proudly displayed but we thought it would be uncool to buy Australian wine when there were foreign ones waiting to be tried. Our main criteria was that it had a screwtop lid as we didn't have a corkscrew...I would loved to have bought a bottle which had tulips on the label but as it had a cork we didn't think the captain would appreciate us cracking the bottle open on the side of the boat, so we settled on a Tampranillo from Spain which ended up being an easy drinking red wine, just perfect for our trip.

Where are we going I hear you ask? We had seen a privately owned "free" canal tour advertised on Getaway a few months ago and both decided it looked like just what we'd like to do. Its appeal was in the fact that there was a maximum of ten passengers and the boat was small and went places that the larger canal tour operators couldn't get to. You take along food and wine to share with the other passengers, and at the end you pay the owner a donation to cover their costs. From what the other passengers told us (this was at least the second trip to Amsterdam for all of them), the other tours involved plugging in a set of headphones to your chosen language and a recorded voice passed on information - no interaction with the crew or other passengers…we knew we'd made the right decision. The reason it was "free" was to avoid the Dutch redtape applied to this type of business.

We reckoned when we saw the name Randy on the signup list on Saturday there would be at least one American on board and we were right...a couple (as in male and female Aaron) and three pot-smoking Canadians, two obviously a couple as well. We were the only ones who bought food which was fine as we had more than enough to share. Sadly though the cheese we bought in the morning and placed in the hostel fridge in a named and knotted plastic bag had been taken, I guess this is a downside to staying in hostels. Hayley was very unhappy, not so much because it had been stolen but more so in the fact that they actually rifled through and took only the cheese - bloody vegetarians, you can't trust them. The Pollyanna in me suggested that we were lucky that we'd only lost our cheese and not our cameras or laptops.

Our captain, Diego, was the guy who appeared on Getaway and was great. He pointed out lots of unique landmarks, like the smallest house in Amsterdam which was only about a metre wide, apparently it spreads out behind the façade. He also had interesting facts and figures to share, such as, one person (usually a male heading to relieve themselves in the canal) falls into the canal and drowns a week. Apparently they trip over the ankle high rail which is actually to stop the cars driving into the canal. The Amsterdam council has distributed grey portable urinals throughout the city in an effort to reduce the death toll. As well, one car a week ends up in the canals.) It was interesting to see the houseboats up close and get a different view of the city from the canals. A tour we would highly recommend, and as you could ask questions it was much more personalised.

Well tomorrow's the big day....I begin my five day journey on my own. I must say I'm a little nervous as it's been great to have Hayley, who has travelling down to a fine art, leading the way, but I'm also excited and keen to give it a go on my own.