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Lego, Ferraris and Lego Ferraris

The van tyre was sorted by a very nice man.  I said to him "I'm English,  do you speak English?"  And he replied with "I'm German.  Yes I do speak English."  I did insist on saying "Mein reifen hast ein problem mit ein schraube, kanst du haup?"  [My tyre has a problem with a screw, can you help? Or thereabouts!]  Which he thought was amusing but he understood the situation.  15Euro later, which included a test and sticker for german low emissions zones, we were sent on our way with a healthy tyre.  Then we left Germany behind.


Today we have mostly been at Legoland.  I've never been to the one at Windsor but for some reason have always wanted to go to the real one in Denmark.  So we spent 7 hours there...  It's great, even though we kept having to say "I hope the kids are enjoying themselves" (our imaginery ones) as we got strange looks from the happy families out there!  I got Fran on a roller coaster (yes a real one!), we saw a 4D film (in English, which foxed some of the locals), went on 2 water rides, and some sort of laser-quest-ghost-train thing.  

Oh, and there was some lego.  And as luck would have it, for one weekend only, there was a Ferrari exhibition.  So we went to that too.  The red car picture is for Simon, who will at least appreciate and share in my knowledge of what it is ;-)  The F1 car is a life size lego model, which was pretty cool.

And tonight I am writing to you from a ferry terminal as we sit and wait to board a big boat to take us across the Kattegat to Sweden.  Goteborg tomorrow, a city I know reasonably well, so looking forward to returning there and showing Fran the old haunts / drinking dens.  She's catching some zzz's now, so you will get her take in the next few days.

Thieving feckers

Those cheeky Thai's!  Not so cheeky, more like thieving bastards.  My card has been cloned again and I'm apparently spending PHI in Thailand.  Or not!

As luck would have it I found out quite quickly, since we have internet at the campsite and prudence had me check the bank.  So a panicked phone call to A&L later and hopefully this extravagent spending will stop.  It would appear they only got about £700, aaarrrgghhhh.  It's not like I have mortgage which "puts my house at risk should I fail to make payments" coming out of the account or anything!

Whine over.  Hopefully.  Let's put some faith in the British Banking System.

Colourful Trees

As Mark said I might have something to say about the gardens, I thought I better be "obedient" and write something about the gardens!!!!!! They were fantastic. I didn't really know what it was I was going to and I certainly did not understand the size or number of flowers that we would see. It is all spring bulbs and plants and it is really amazing. There are so many different colours and types of flowers, including some displays of orchids and lillies inside greenhouses. So much colour everywhere and some lovely fragrances. We managed to combine the beautiful flowers with a bird of prey talk. All in Dutch but then the birds don't talk so it was great fun just watching them.
We went to Keukenhof on Liberation day. A national holiday every fifth year in Holland. As we drove there down many residential streets I was surprised at how many of the houses had a flag pole and a flag proudly flying. I some streets it was all the houses but in most streets it was at least half of the houses. A very different approach to celebrating than the one we might take.

The day before is Memorial day, on this day you fly your flag at half mast and at 8pm everything stops for 2 minutes. It was really nice to be here at this time of year and see some of the celebrations.

Not long before we had been driving through Germany just after May Day.  Apparently, the villages in Germany all cut a tall tree down and decorate it with ribbon and then put it up really high in the village, this is to stop the other villages from stealing their tree. They then go out and try and steal trees from other villages, it all sounds very strange, but it looks really lovely.

Bloomin' Marvelous

Keukenhof, ok I suppose.  Fran'll go on about it to be sure, so I'll say what else has been happenning instead.

Drove up the coast of the Netherlands and stayed up near Den Helder after seeing all the flowers.  It's quite windy here and my evening run was much easier on the way back than the way out (by design).  Next we drove over the Afsluitdijk, which is about 30km long with the North Sea on one side and a whopping great inland sea on the other.  Stopped at a monument thing in the middle and had coffee, and were treated to a really good little cafe with all sorts of character and historical pictures etc on the walls/ceiling, well worth a stop.

More coastal meanderings, and a swift in/out of Groningen and then the Autobahn to Bremen.  When you're sat at 90kph or thereabouts and someone tanks past at 180+, you certainly feel the air move...

Before we left home originally I had had a look at some bits of the route we were likely to take and the Bremen to Hamburg motorway was an area to avoid due to roadworks.  So when the satnav told me we had 46mininutes delay just before Bremen, we though a quick detour would sort it.  Oh, no.  A couple of hours later having had a not so scenic tour round the outskirts of Bremen we found a campsite.  It was called "Paradis" somethingorother, which it wasn't, but we were grateful for the stop.

Today, we've been into Hamburg and seen the Minitur Wunderland, which is mainly a trainset, but has all sorts of scenery and other activities going on.  It is brilliant... even though I like this kind of modelling very much and have seen a few of these villages, this one rates very highly up there.  It's massive, but all done at the small matchbox toy kind of scale.  Look it up on the web...  It's done with a very germanic sense of humour too, which is equally entertaining.  I loved it, and if anyone is anywhere near Hamburg I'd recommend looking it up.

Tonight, just leaving a supermarket, we had a strange tk, tk, tk, tk as we drove away.  Only to stop and check to find a handy extra screw embedded in the tyre!  The brand new one that I put on just before we left.  It seems to be holding it's own for now, but we've found out where a repair place is for the morning to have it looked at - first thing to go wrong in a mechanical sense after 6000km's though.  Not bad.  Hopefully not the start of anything either.  Starting the trek into the uncharted North tomorrow, so wish us luck - I can't work out whether the roads will be clear of snow or not?

Nasal Tourism

So what do I mean by that. Well, isn't the sense of smell a funny one, or mine is certainly. I can still vividly remember the perfume that my fourth year junior school teacher wore 23 years ago (Oh now that is a scary thought!). In fact if I smell the perfume again now I am taken back immediately to those days. With that in mind I have been loving Italy. The smells, some good some bad are just so exciting. We stayed in a "traditional" Italian campsite that had a certain something about it, and as we got out the van there was the most beautiful fragrance of freshias. It took me straight back to a wonderful holiday we shared with Mark's parents in Italy some years ago where although the flower was different, it was the same sweet and "hot" smell. The campsite turned out to be quaint but functional. I thought is was probably the worst we would stay on until last night. We had a long day driving and we were slightly bermused when the campsite that we had aimed for did not open until May 1st and this was the 30th April. So we drove on and on until on our fifth attempt to find somewhere to stay we picked a field in somebody's front garden. It was the campsite eqivalent of Faulty Towers. There were comings and goings and much loud discussion (arguement) about the quality of the cement being mixed for a job on site. And then there were the facilties! - two showers of dubious quality and no hot water and a toilet that did not really meet my English standards. "Oh well" we thought and made the best of it. Well, this morning as I walked around the building in the other direction I discovered the rest of the facilities 3 sinks for washing up, 2 basins and 2 more convention toilets. It just proves I should use my eyes more.
We have seen some beautiful sights over the last few weeks, some highlights so far include snow topped mountains peaking out of the clouds, bright yellow rape fields, terracotta houses in the Mediterranean and blue, blue skies. Talking of blue skies, where did they go today, we saw our first real rain in 19 days. That brought with that lovely just rained smell.

One last thought, we were receivers of two lovely acts of human kindness today. Whilst in Geneva this morning we were looking at a parking meter with some dismay and a very kind man stopped his car and gave us full instructions in how to use it in English. Secondly, this evening we have stopped at a lovely small French campsite for which we are paying 11 Euros. We saw it had a washing machine and decided it would be a great time to catch up on washing so we asked at reception about using the machine and paid for a wash and a turn on the drier. As, I staggered down the path with two full bags of the washing the lady met me and helped me to load up two washing machines, one being her own personal machine. During the course of the evening she has then been taking it all out and putting it in the drier and removing the dry stuff and folding it for us. All of this without a single word of English spoken, much bad French on our account and much smiling, what a lovely lady! (We have been trying to do it ourselves but every time we turned our backs she is there)

Vorsprung durch technic?

Annecy camping was choice and a bit basic, but near the lake for a nice long run.  Then Geneva for another lakeside stroll and coffee before returning to France.  Stayed in a wonderful little site in Plombieres where all the washing was done (I'm sure Fran will explain!).  Cross country through some great views, hills and valleys up to Metz - we followed some roads marked as green (sightseeing routes) on the map.

Luxembourg, with cheap fuel was next, where we stopped and took mass in a Catholic Abbey with the Gregorian monks, in French ;-o  Tried to see the "Family of Man" photo exhibition, but it doesn't do Mondays...  that's why F looks glum in the photo - nothing I'd done, promise.

And since then it's been Germany and cathedral after cathedral!  Well, Koln and Aachen.  Both well worth a visit.  Also managed to park happily without fuss right in the centre of both cities - thumbs up for that.

We're currently driving up through Netherlands aiming for the bulb fields tomorrow which should still be in bloom.  Then it's off to the Arctic wastes of scandinavia - had a taste of this as we woke up this morning in 4 degrees.  So we've had the heating on a bit in the van.  Toasty, since Fran does like it hotter than me.