The long drive to Amsterdam

Well, what do you know; it was raining cats and dogs again! That means that it must be travel day. Neither of us slept really well last night, I don't know why but we just don't sleep well in hotels, so we were a little frazzled around the edges when we left. We didn't have coffee or breakfast at the hotel mainly because their coffee was so awful that I refuse to knowingly punish my body by subjecting it to that stuff; I can't even call it coffee.

The first hour was marked by the swish of the wiper blades and the occasional snore from my comatose passenger. The second hour, the rain abated so all I had to listen to was the occasional snore. Just before we went over the French/Belgian border we stopped at a onestop which didn't looks so great but we ordered the coffee and some croissants which were awesome; really fresh croissants with good coffee. I think that sometimes one's future expectations of an event have a lot to do with the remembered experience of that same event in an inverse sort of way.

Driving straight through Belgium our subjective experience was that Belgium really needs to get it's act together; it's roads are worse than South Africa's and everything is grimy. Some of the signboards along the motorways are so covered with industrial grime that one can hardly read them at all so moving over the border and into Holland was a welcome change. The trip, on the whole, was quite uneventful and we arrived at a very nice campsite called Gaasperplaas which looks like below.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent reading, drinking wine and chilling because I didn't feel like actually doing any sightseeing after driving the 500km from Rheims to Amsterdam.

We did however find what happened to one of the mosquitoes that had been bugging Caron while she was reading in the black forest ...

... killed by Anathem!