My wife has always wanted to see the white cliffs of Dover so we took the ferry to Oostende, Belgium from Dover it was about a two and a half hour drive from our house in Windsor to Dover, by the time we got there it was raining. Not the light British rain but that hard pouring rain like in Oklahoma or something. There is a castle and some secret tunnels from World War two in Dover, and since my trousers were soaked in the short walk to the sign that told us that there was a castle and some secret tunnels from World War two we decided that the tunnels sounded drier. I was impressed, but Jim thought it was a bit to British since they did not talk about the American’s much and it did not seem that the people that worked there saw much action. He thought the sign pointing out where go to get your veracious veins worked on kind of summed up the idea that the hospital in the secret tunnels didn’t exactly see a bunch of action in the war. I got a really crummy shot of the white cliffs from the ferry but due to the magic of digital photography it doesn’t look to bad. The trip was very bumpy and since I was already wet and cranky I upgraded us to first class. The sea was so rocky that they did not serve any hot drinks or meals.  They did serve us a cheese plate but as I said the sea was very rocky so we did not eat anything. I think Jim and Julie eat skittles, which I am pretty sure you can get in the States but seem to impress the heck out of Jim.   

We spent two nights in Bruges, which is for some reason, is pronounced Brook-kHin and it is not like calling it Rome in English and Roma in Italian. It is spelled Brugge in Dutch, Bruges in French, Brügge in German and Brujas in Spanish, but it is pronounced “Brook KH (a harsh, throat-clearing, guttural Hin” in all of them. I know this because I was corrected by all of my friends from the Benelux area and by the taxi driver in Amsterdam. I would answer the question where did you go and I would say Bruges which would get me a puzzled look then I would say "A town in Belgium spelled B-R-U-G-E-S and they would respond, "Oh, you mean Brook-kHin?" Any way it is a great medieval city with canals running throughout, and lots of old medieval and 19th century buildings. It was a bit expensive since it is a tourist town but it is one of the prettiest places I have seen in Europe. Jim and Julie commented that it had sort of an older crowd but that it was a nice introduction to Europe. I was happy to park the car and leave it because at the first intersection off the ferry the GPS system told me to “Make a right at the round-about.” (Traffic circle, but my GPS has a British accent) Well, I turned left as you do in England, but that is not such a good idea in Belgium and I almost got us all killed. It is kind of hard to drive a right hand drive car on the right hand side of the road. My legs were shaking and I let out a very large sigh when I finally parked the car. We decided to do walking tours of Bruges.

We hadn’t booked any thing after Bruges since we where not sure if we wanted to see lots of places or lots of things in a couple of places, after I almost killing us, we decided that less driving and more walking was a good thing. I called Susan from the road and asked her to book us some rooms I told her that Jim wanted to keep the cost down to around $100 dollars. She swallowed hard and told me she would do best she could. When I told her to see if she could also book rooms in Venice and Rome at the same price she hung up laughing. It took about 3 hours to drive to Amsterdam and the navigation system got us there without much bother. I parked outside of the hotel and had my wife run into see where I could park the car. The hotel did not have any parking and directed me to the nearest public parking lot. I was a bit unhappy and no one volunteered to go with me. Pulling in, I was stopped by some moron trying to back out, I went around him then realised that the Dutch word for Full is “Voll” and now I was the moron trying to back out of while some new moron was driving around me trying to get into a full car park. My GPS has a slick feature that finds the next nearest car park. Car Park two was .5km away it was Voll, car park three was an additional .8km away and it was Voll. I was now about a click and a half away (maybe a mile) from the hotel and did not really know how to find my way back and the next car park was a full kilometre away. I decided that I would drive to the airport park the car and take a taxi back to the hotel. I parked the car about 3 hours after I started looking for a place to park. Those of you who love me know that was now happy, carefree, and looking forward the rest of the trip. I decided it would be a bad thing to buy a ticket home and call the hotel and tell them to pick up the car and come on back to England whenever they felt like it. I got into the taxi and the driver asked me, “Where did you fly in from?” I told him I was too stupid to park a car in Amsterdam and that I decided to park at the airport. I also told him we just came from Bruges, got the puzzled look and the first lesson in hocking up the name Brook-kHin.   

Amsterdam was great, the parking is a bit expensive, $55 to park at the airport, $100 taxi ride back to the hotel then a couple days later another $100 taxi ride back to the airport to pick up the car. Amsterdam is a much younger tourist location. I assume because the coffee shops sell marijuana and the local flower shops sell tulips and marijuana plants, also a lot of “High from Amsterdam” T-shirts. Amsterdam has done for drugs what Las Vegas has done for gambling. My bother, who is much younger than I am, and I’ll prove this with two points. First, he took his fiancée out one the first night we were in town, while his older brother stayed in the room and ordered room service. I know that does not make him seem especially young just makes me seem especially old, but he took her for a walk in the “red light” district. Then second, he commented to his fiancée how hot the hookers looked. All right maybe that doesn’t make him seem as much “young” as just kind of stupid, but I love him so I am putting it down as youth. We walked all around Amsterdam taking in the museums, some window-shopping, and a nice dinner cruise along the cannels.   

On the last day we wanted to travel down one of the motorways that is lined by the world famous Dutch tulips, or course we got lost and ended up doing circles and back tracking, this may sound kind of boring but you have to remember I am lost in the Netherlands, driving in a right hand drive car, on the right side of the road looking for tulip fields while trying to stay out of the cannels, I was plenty excited. We finally stopped for a traditional lunch of Chinese food and got to see our first Windmill up close. After lunch we finally saw the tulip fields but they were really more field and less tulips since I think most of the crop had already been harvested. We decided to head to the ferry. We got there about two hours early but I was happy to park the car and longingly look out over the English channel back to where they drive on the correct side of the road, OK maybe not the correct side of the road but at least where the roads were designed for the kind of car I am driving.   

The ferry was very nice smooth, fast and they even had a movie theatre on board. My wife and I had already seen all of the movies, while I had seen two of them on overseas flights and we had seen the other one together. Jim and Julie decided to see a “chick flick” which I thought was a good idea because it is always better to see what your fiancée wants to see if your still telling her that the hookers look hot. The rest of the trip home was even more boring than the rest of this travel log so I will stop droning on and promise that I don’t have any more trips planned for awhile.   
  
  © 2000 Sun Tzu