Belgium and The Netherlands:

31st of May we arrived in Calais, France and had to adjust to driving on the right side of the road again. Loche took to it pretty easily with no incidences so far. From Calais we drove up to Ghent, Belgium. We stopped at a caravan park about 20 minutes outside of Ghent. That afternoon, Loche and Cara went for a walk to the nearby village and found a lovely lake with eateries and pubs along the shore…so of course the logical thing to do was to stop in and have an ale (or 2).

The following day we drove into Ghent. From 1000 to about 1550 AD Ghent was one of the most important cities in Europe. It was larger than London and second only to Paris in size. It was also the second largest port in Europe during this time (Paris was the largest).

The best thing about Ghent is it's not a big dot on the tourist map, so there are not large crowds. It's a beautiful city full of wonderful old buildings, churches and picturesque waterways and parklands. We took a 40 minute boat ride through the canals and learnt about the history of some of the beautiful buildings. In the 70's they built three muilti-story residential buildings that look a bit like public housing. The residents of Ghent voted them the ugliest buildings in Ghent and our guide informed us they are one of the reasons Ghent is not Unesco world heritage listed.

After the boat ride we went to a local Bierhaus (beer house) to taste some of the 150 different Belgium beers they have available. Many of the beers were 7 - 9% alcohol and some were up to 12% - makes the Tooheys Extra Dry look like a light beer!

Before we left Australia I had a feeling this trip was going to prove a little more challenging than last year, as Cara is that bit older. When we first moved into the caravan it was taking her about 2 hours to fall asleep every night - because it was all new she would lie in bed and just play and talk. We've been in the caravan over a week now and she is getting better as she gets used to the new routine. I'm sure the jetlag didn't help. Our fist and only day so far of sightseeing in a city was the day we did Ghent. This day was very challenging for everyone. Cara was getting tired very easily and generally not happy. We did the boat ride partly to give her a rest, but after five minutes she was bored. We weren't in the city as long as we would have liked. We may need to adjust how we do sightseeing this time and will need to employ some bargaining techniques!

For our next stop we chose the De Hoge veLuwe National Park in The Netherlands. I decided on a child-friendly caravan park that had a pool with waterslide and heaps of playgrounds. We arrived on the 1st of June and that afternoon we caught up on some washing and took Cara to the playgrounds. The following day we decided to have a day going for walks around the caravan park (which was huge) and going to the pool and playgrounds. Giving Cara a fun day and also getting her used to walking a bit further each day. We all had a lovely relaxing day and it was great to see the sun shining for a change. I grabbed some brochures from reception about the nearby National Park and Loche saw there were free bikes you can use to ride around the national park. I haven't had much experience on bikes so I was quite nervous about this.

The next day we drove the 4kms to the National Park office and picked up our bikes. This was probably the best day we've had so far. The National Park is covered with over 30km's of bikeways and they are nice and wide and are separate from the walking paths. After about 10 minutes I was a little more confident and on my way. The bikes all had child seats so Loche put Cara on the back of his and she had an absolute ball. She kept telling Daddy to go faster to beat Mummy!

We arrived in the middle of the park at a museum (which was closed). There was also a restaurant and a very large adventure playground there for the kids. We had a great time at the playground going on the rope walks and on the flying fox and then had lunch and a beer at the restaurant. We rode a bit further past the restaurant but then turned around to head home. All in all we did about 12 kms of riding - pretty good considering we don't ever ride! Oh, we didn't see any deer or wild pigs, which is why you go here - but we still had fun!!

The next day we packed up the caravan and were on our way to Wolfsburg - about an hour east of Hanover, Germany. Wolfsburg is where the large Volkswagon Factory is and as this is on our way to Berlin, it makes a good halfway stop.