Ok, let us cast our minds back…

So, we left Oban for a mission to the East, 6 hours' worth of trains…pfff. Podge is getting pretty good at napping on journeys though which is nice (both for her and James's ears!). We stopped off in Stonehaven for dinner with some old friends and then headed back down the road to Dad's. Our plans were still a bit loose as to when we were going to head to Edinburgh, but we opted for spending more time with Dad and Maggie (and ultimately saving a bit of cash), so spent 3 lovely days there just relaxing and drinking some more Guinness…although we're still not convinced of its anti-midgey/mosquito repellent properties!

After a bit of a rush, and some confusion over the early train times, we were on our way to Edinburgh a bit later than planned…and on to our first AirBnb accommodation. A bit of missioning later, we'd found our way, the place we were staying was a short bus ride out of town, but perfect. Time to go exploring!! Spent most of the morning and early afternoon walking up some pretty big hills (a lot of Edinburgh seems to be up a hill!) and doing mainly free things (we wanted to go to the castle but that would have taken up half of our day's budget to go in, so we decided against it!!)…and then we, well, went and had a few drinks with an old friend…and no more sightseeing was done that day…

Thursday we got up slowly, packed up our stuff (this seems to happening a lot at the moment!) and headed to the airport for our flight to Amsterdam. Up until now, it hasn't felt like we were going away for a long time, as, although we were doing 'new things' in Scotland, it was still relatively familiar…this was going to be really new.

It took a while, but we managed to navigate our way through the airport to the train station and then onto our first night's accommodation - it was small. Once we had both of our bags and ourselves in there, there wasn't a huge amount of room…so we went in search of dinner and attempted to practice the pigeon Dutch we'd learned from the phrasebook. All good, we'd survived our first day in Dam…. Well until later that night when a mosquito had the best feast of its little life on Podgi's legs!

Day 2 and another new place to stay, but at least we knew this was for a few nights so we could de-camp a little (and do some washing!). We've invested in a travel card as it works out as slightly cheaper than having to pay for each journey, and as we are out of town again, we're having to use the buses and trams a lot.

So, Amsterdam is quite good fun, we stopped in some bars alongside the canals and had some beers while watching the people go by. We played 'Spot the most stoned person' and James won. It's amazing and slightly unnatural to walk down the street and just smell weed everywhere - made odder by the mix of tourists, young families, local hippies and drunk/stoned English/American tourists mingling together - makes for quite amusing people watching. Everything is so expensive as well! I guess it's difficult because we've been travelling around between places quite quickly, so we've ended up eating out for most meals. Tomorrow, we're going to try and find a supermarket and get some supplies.

Tomorrow - we're off to The Hague to see one of James' friends for the day and then Sunday morning early, we head to Paris!

Tot Ziens!

Rug and Podgi

xxx