I was excited to have the chance of a day trip to Amsterdam, immediately thinking of visiting Anne Frank's secret annex, the Van Gogh museum, and eating Dutch pancakes. However, things did not go quite according to plan... Dale and I farewelled Karen and Dave, who were off to Canada on a caravanning holiday, at Schipol airport and then we continued to Amsterdam. Unfortunately due to 'line maintenance' we had to catch a replacement bus service and then another ...

Stepping off the Easyjet plane and into Amsterdam's Schipol airport, we jolted from our traveller's complacency after a month spent in an English speaking country, and once again things became more difficult. Our first difficulty was at border security when the passport control officer asked us in stilted English how long our visit to Europe would be, and Dale responded brightly "5 months". Instantly the Dutch man's face became serious and he began waving our p...

London turned on beautiful weather for our return visit. I took Dale to Covent Garden, which was busy with street performers and shoppers, and every table outside the cafes and restaurants seemed to be full. We walked by some of the Covent Garden institutions - the Punch and Judy bar, Rules (Winston Churchill's fav!), the Maple Leaf (obviously Canadian) and Walkabout! We ended up on the Strand and continued our walk around the Monopoly board by continuing on t...

Dale breathed a sigh of relief as he handed over the keys of our unscathed rental car to the Herz man in Brighton. I wasn't so happy to be rid of the car as we are again reliant on public transport and our own feet to get around. At least the weather was fine and we had already dumped our bags at our especially grotty b & b. From Herz we walked to a coffee shop to plot our next move. This wasn't particularly difficult as there were only really two things ...

"Why are we going to Portsmouth again?" was Dale's question after we'd been on the road for what seemed like several hours. That was a tricky one. The reason I had included Portsmouth on our itinerary was to fulfil two childhood dreams of mine - #1. To stand on the deck of Victory, Nelson's flagship at the battle of Trafalgar #2. To visit the ruins of the Roman Palace near Bournemouth which featured in one of my school textbooks. (I was a history geek from an e...