Category Archives: travel

Did a thing, and got married!

Leave a Reply

Wedding

For better or for worse we went and got married in Cornwall last weekend. The venue, and hosts, were lovely!

Check out Frieda And The Moon — you can stay there as well if you fancy a glamped up break away from civilisation and hustle and bustle.

Free roaming chickens and birdsong, and sheep bleeting, will be the only thing that wakes you there.

We had hot tubs (normally not a fan but good for my leg) and chimneas burning into the evening.

We spent a further week in Cornwall – albeit not very relaxing – but visitited some of the local towns: Looe, Mevagissey (good model railway exhibition and lovely harbour), and the Eden project. Great to see tropical plants all growing in one place!

We stayed in Weston-Super-Mare on the way down and Covid had hit it hard. Unfortunately many of the sea front venues have closed but you can still get donkey rides on the beach if you’re so inclined.

The drive back took 7hrs and I would rather like to nuke the whole A30 if possible. Recommendation: definitely stop somewhere on the way back to break that journey!

Ironically only had 1 pint of Tribute during the whole week as I was driving that much so have to go back and find somewhere to stay in a more built up aread 🙂

Summer Holiday – Part 2

Leave a Reply

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.

Waiting for the plane at Schipol Airport.

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.

Chilling at the museum village

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….

Heineken never tasted so good…

Summer Holiday – Part 1

Leave a Reply

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.

Classic Citroen DS parked in front of one of the old fortifications, now converted to offices and public loos.
One of the fortifications arround Muiden – this is now a museum

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.

Heineken Experience – Amsterdam

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.