Birthday Party Number 3

For my actual birthday, we were in Amsterdam. On Saturday 7th, we left the campsite early to catch the first rugby game, NZ vs Argentina at 9am. Then the Springboks pulled off a  great birthday surprise just for me by thrashing the Aussies 38 -12. By 6pm we were tasting Jenevers, a Dutch gin, drunk neat like a grappa, with Christiane and Arjen in a traditional, old Amsterdam pub. We had a fabulous Mexican dinner, with jugs of margaritas at Los Pilones, where Sabine, Cristina and Andreas joined us. We all enjoyed a very festive evening. After midnight the die-hards went dancing in a blues bar with a great live band and then faded slowly over a last drink in a jazz bar. Neil and I had to catch the 3.10am night bus back to the campsite. The bus driver took a detour off his route to drop us right outside the gate- whose ever heard of that in a big city! Sunday 8th was a pretty quiet day at the campsite, reading the Sunday papers and watching movies on the computer. Unfortunately, Neil accidentally lost all the photos while downloading them, so the silly pic was taken on Monday outside the restaurant!

Belguim and Holland

We spent a day in and around Ypres, visiting the WW1 museum before heading to Brussels. We really enjoyed Brussells as a small European city with great café culture and enough to keep tourists busy. We spent a whole Saturday watching Rugby, Championship and Currie Cup games, at the Six Nations Pub.There was plenty of US Open tennis on every day as well, so we soon became regulars at the Six Nations. We loved the old African Museum, about to close indefinitely, I think, due to it being a rather non- pc, old colonial place and rather an embarrassment in modern Europe! The Magritte Museum was also really good. At first we were really put off by the rows and rows of awful tourist restaurants with foreign waiters touting Moulles Frites to a passing parade of  Unesco twitchers. Then we found the St. Catherine's Canal area and had a few really nice meals. In Holland, we chose to go to Den Bosch and Delft, two really nice Dutch towns, one touristy and one not so, but both worthwhile, before heading to Schoorl to spend a great weekend with the Benders/ English clan, catching up over loads of wine and whiskey. We did hike in the dunes and cycle around the dykes as well! The Dutch really are the bicycle nation of the world! And probably the fittest too! Everyone from 3 to 93 owns a bike; great distance or bad weather are not deterrants!
On Monday 2nd September, we met Sabine, Benjamin and Tobias and got the ferry to Texel Island. We rented a fabulous cabin at Loopmansduin, and had four days of glorious, hot weather on the beach! Yes, the picture is Holland not Thailand!
Amsterdam was the next stop for a weekend of birthdays, rugby and tennis, this time at the Coco's Outback Pub near Rembrandt Square. Although the Northern European autumn did start rolling in, we loved walking around Amsterdam's various districts. Highlights were visits to the newly opened Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum.