update

I've spent my three days in Amsterdam, had a pretty good time. The museums were ok, pretty cool collections of stuff, but to be honest I'm not a huge fan of dutch painters, most of them are pretty boring. As for the city itself, it's a crazy place, I was able to navigate it a little better than London though, the canals and general city layout helps a lot. Met up with a few Aussies at the hostel I was at, pretty cool guys, sat around drinking bundy rum at the hostel with them for a bit, it tasted like home. Incidentally, the hostel I was at was total rubbish. The rooms weren't too bad, though they moved me from one room to another for no apparent reason after the first night, I'm assuming because they messed up their bookings. No microwave or washing machine was also a giant pain in the arse. The breakfast was a joke too, jam and bread, they didn't even have toasters. Anyway, hostel aside I had a good time in Amsterdam.

The day I left I went pretty early, at about 9am or so. Powered on down to Utrecht which was my intended stopping point for the day, but it only took me about two hours and I was feeling energetic so I kept going. On the way when I was looking at a sign trying to figure out which way I needed to go some old bloke came out of his house and offered me some coffee, so I drank coffee with him and ate a cake thing. He was pretty cool, and he gave me some directions to go through a different route that would be nice. Part of the route was riding on top of a dike, was neat given how flat the place is, could see over the river and all around for miles. I then had to catch a funny little boat across the river to get to the next bit (I ran into a couple of these, they varied between normal boats with car ramps, car ramp boats that pulled across the river on cables, and normal boats that only took bikes and people). Somewhere along the way I found a roadside stall at a farm selling cherries, ripest tastiest cherries I've ever eaten, 7 euros a kilo which isn't too bad I guess. Anyway, ended up in Erichem, a little village near Tiel in a fair size camping ground there. There was a german or dutch or something of the like guy there who'd also ridden his bike there - he'd come from Lelystad, a little further away than me. His english wasn't great so I didn't really talk to him much, he seemed like a bit of a gimp anyway. Went to bed early that night, and woke up at about 6 or so.

I found out the morning after that when packet pasta says to add milk, it isn't really an optional step, you just end up with pasta in cornflour goo if you skip the whole milk thing. Anyway, the next day I cycled down near Eindhoven, was a pretty good days ride. Found another camping ground (millions of caravans in this one) and set up there. Spent way too much on dinner (20 euro :/) because I couldn't be arsed cooking some horrible pasta or something. Anyway, some dutch guys about my age turned up at the campsite a little later, and immediately offered me a beer. I'm not really one to turn down a beer, so I didn't. Turns out the beer was store brand (from euroshopper) beer, but it wasn't too bad. Much better than Tesco's attempts at beer. Anyway, we went to a pool hall for a bit, awesome place actually. It was in a smallish town called Helmond (the campsite was in Mierlo), but was great. Nice tables, nice cues, pay a few euros to get a set of balls rather than having to feed a table coins all night, and it had a proper sorta atmosphere, pretty quiet though as it was a monday night. Anyway, we played some pool then went back to the campsite and drank some more beer, and started a bonfire. Getting the fire going was a bit interesting as it had rained only a few hours before, but we stole all of the toilet paper out of the toilets and used that to start it. Sat around getting drunk and stoned with them till really early in the morning.

Woke up really late the morning after, about 10 ish, with not enough sleep. Said goodbye to the dutch guys and cycled off. Fairly uneventful days cycling, but now I'm in south Limburg, about 20km east of Maastricht, in a little place called Schinnen. Pretty awesome little camping ground I'm in, it's small, there's a washing machine and dryer (though it costs like 6 euro to use both, I'll still pay it though I guess :/), there's free internet that no-one else is using as it's all old people staying right now, pretty cool really. When I arrived I was wandering around looking for the place tents are supposed to setup and a nice old couple with a caravan waved me over. They told me where tents were supposed to set up, and gave me a beer (I think I looked pretty wrecked). I had a good chat with them, their english was a little rusty but really quite good compared to most old people here. They had a cool little Daschund puppy too. Anyway, I was hoping to get to Maastricht today, but the lack of sleep last night meant I was pretty tired by the time I got down here, and it was getting to be late afternoon. There was also the fact that I came across the first lot of hills in Holland. Until a few hours ago, the only times I've had to cycle uphill was when there was a bridge, or when I was going up a dike, I seriously hadn't seen a single hill in the place till now. It was a cracker too, a good 8% or so grade at a guess, I gave up on that one and walked it. On the plus side I got to ride down the hill on my bike on the other side. Going fast with a fully loaded bike is a little interesting, not that I was game to go hugely fast, but still. I was looking for a camping ground I'd seen on my map, but lucked out and found one closer. I was planning on staying the one night here, but I'm going to stay a second because I really couldn't be arsed cycling anywhere today. Anyway, spent today wandering around a little bit, seeing what was in the area and trying to find a supermarket. Found a brewery in the area, but the next tour in english isn't for like a month or so, not really much use to me. Tomorrow I will probably head to Maastricht and spend a day there, then onto belgium for a day or two.

also, a rough map of where I have been:

Grotere kaart weergeven