.Leaving Zwolle was a bit intense, we all shed a few tears saying
goodbye to Tante(Auntie) Co at the train station. It was almost harder
than leaving NZ! We'll look forward to October when we will visit again.
Arriving less than 2 hours later by Snell(fast) Train in Amsterdam we
decided to tram the 2kms to our accommodation... Followed by 2 hours of
ping ponging around the streets surrounding Vondelpark in search of the
bed and breakfast we had booked. Each place we stopped to ask for
directions sent us to a totally different address! It seems Vondelpark
is quite large and that Vondelpark B&B is quite the common selection
for a hotel name.
We arrived at the bed and breakfast.. Which turned out to be a very
small room, on the third floor of steep Amsterdam stairs with no
towels..and the best part.. No breakfast we were told! All for a casual
50euros/100NZ(that's cheap). Bed and...
NOTHING!!!
That evening we had a great catch up with mum's side of the family, and
caught up with cousins I hadn't seen in 13 years! So nice to spend time
with family, very emotional giving Mum's sister a cuddle, made me a
slight bit homesick.
An early morning wake up to get to the bus stop to head to Berlin. We
joined Busabout after much deliberation, as they have a route that was
very similar to where we wanted to go, but without all the organized
tour stuff so we could be flexible and organize our own discoveries of
each country/ city. And you can adjust your journey as you want, so good
if you fall in love with a place!
I can't believe how many Aussie's we've met! I'm sure I didn't even meet
that many in Australia itself! The hostels and tour buses seem loaded
with them.
Berlin was amazing, we spent 4 days discovering it's streets, Cathedrals
and history. Our highlight was Berlin wall which the Nazi's erected to
separate Communist ruled east berlin from west Berlin. Upon the
liberation they destroyed much of the wall, but the
longest(1.3kms)preserved section is now covered in murals and street
art, the East Side Gallery. Rick left Germany with a little bit of NZ by
scaling the wall and sitting up there much to my horror for a few
minutes, posing for the other hundreds of tourists!
It turns out that on the ground floor of our Hostel(Helter Skelter
Berlin) said to be the only last REAL hostel in Berlin.. there is a huge
club that runs till nearly sunrise on Saturday nights.. So it was a
tired start Sunday Morning at 7am to walk a few kms and onto the Blue
Lady..that's what they call our buses.. Off to Prague.
Rick & Jazz
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