So, amongst other things to do on my week off work, I finally got engaged to my lovely girlfriend of over four years, Annabelle 🙂
Time to move on to the next stage of our relationship and make things a little more permanent!
More news and updates soon but for the time being we’re still all taking it in!
Short update for now but a good one — we’re all very happy.
For the second leg of our holiday we would fly from Amsterdam to Hamburg. We got up at around 4 am and got a taxi to the airport from Muiden. No buses were running that early. The taxi cost around €65 but we didn’t really have any other choice.
My cousins live in Hamburg and we had said last year that at some point we would visit. We wanted to tie the two holidays together somehow and save flying out another time as my girlfriend only gets set holidays so we wanted to make the most of it.
The weather was still very warm and on the first day we did a boat trip on the big lake in Hamburg called the Alster Lake. This was very peaceful and there was a nice breeze. The boat we took was a genuine vintage steam driven boat and was very interesting. If you want to go shopping then there are lots of high street brands and promiment shopping outlets, intertwined with restaurants and bars. You can spend a lot of time here just walking and relaxing.
The rest of the time for the most part we just relaxed, visited the village of Volksdorf where my cousins live.
On the last day before we were due to fly back to Amsterdam, I went on an 18km bike ride to the big cemetery, Ohlsdorf Cemetery, which has its own roads and landscaped gardens and avenues. It’s really big if you look at it on a map. This was exhausting as the weather was still warm but we stopped for an ice. I was quite pleased as I can’t remember the last time I got on a bike. Need to do that again soon!
Overall we had a really good time. In the end we were both pretty exhausted. We went back to Holland for a few days before flying home to England. Until the next time….
I know I haven’t posted here in a while so I thought I’d post about our holiday to Holland and Germany. We had visited Holland before and been to Amsterdam for a weekend in Winter and it was cold! So this time I wanted to go back longer, in Summer.
We stayed outside of Amsterdam this time, in a place called Muiden. Muiden is a really nice little waterside town around 30 minutes by train/bus from Amsterdam and easily connected by public transport. It is full of history and was part of the defence line. It’s got a castle, which is why we stayed there. The Muiderslot is well worth seeing and you can get a self guided audio tour in several languages.
We started our trip by going to the Heineken Brewery Tour which was really great and recommended for any beer buffs. The roof top was open when we went so we could have a drink with a view.
The weather was unbelievably warm when we visited, which is great for a beach holiday where you’re not on the move but when you’re sightseeing it did take it’s toll after a while and my girlfriend was suffering. On the upside the beer was cold and tasty 🙂
We did go back into Amsterdam to go the Hard Rock Cafe, something I had wanted to do from before. Unfortunately I was rather dissapointed with both the food and the experience. I felt like we were rushed through (they were very busy) and I got the feeling they were just trying to shift as many bums on seats and people moved on again as they could. The kebab we had had earlier in the Red Light District was tastier and more value for money!
As part of our trip we took some time to visit family in Hamburg, so I’ll write about that on Part 2.