29 April ’05, Friday.
Back to York this morning to see what we missed yesterday. York has a “City Wall”, that is broken up into 7 sections, which means that it doesn’t cross over either one of the rivers, and there are a number of “bar’s” (gates), that you have to leave the wall, cross the street, and go back up to continue. I think, there was only 2 that we could cross all the way to the next without leaving the wall. There were 3 locations that we had to walk quite a distance to rejoin if we wanted to complete the whole thing (which we did). We also spent a lot of time just exploring the streets (including the “Shambles”), street market, stores, restaurants, and then on to the Castle Museum. We spent at least 4 hours exploring this museum. It was set up much differently than any we have been to so far. A lot of it was set up like you were walking down a street of Ole York, or even into someone’s home. It also had historic items ranging from the 9th century onto the end of WWII. We had a good time there and glad we took the time to see it.
Most of York today, is much the same as it was centuries ago. Yes, there is some new and modern, but most still date back into the 16th and 17th centuries. They are small, but they have a wonderful feeling as soon as you enter. By the way, York is know as the “most haunted city in Europe”. They have not only had people that have seen, heard, of felt a “person”, but even whole Roman regiments in a couple of cases…want to spend a night in one of the most haunted places ??? I’ll let you take my place.

28 April ’05, Thursday. Clifford's Tower,York
Yesterday we traveled north by taking a lot of “lesser traveled” roads. It was a windy day for the road, but fortunately for us, it was mostly a tail wind. The roads here in England are again different from all the others we have traveled on during our journey. The first thing of course is the side of the road that we travel on. The next is, there is no shoulder to these roads, in fact, there is a curb that keeps you on the straight and narrow. It is a little disturbing to see that curb right there beside you on these narrow country roads. We have seen a few “Grand” Country Homes, with all the manicured grounds along the way and also were quite surprised at the amount of mustard that is being grown in all the fields. Another picture, is all the farm land that is fenced in with plants of “hedges”. It is a beautiful sight to see the fields of yellow mustard blooms completely “hedged” in.
Our first stop was the college town of Cambridge. It was one of those towns that you have heard of forever, and you just wanted to see just what it looked like or felt like to be there. This was another town of narrow windy streets with no parking, so I just pulled up to the curb, stopped and got out. “You can’t just park here…”, “Well, if they would make more parking spots, we wouldn’t have too… come on, we will only be a little while”… As it was, as we walked around the corner, we walked right into a great little market going on, so… We also had to visit the Information Center… As luck would have it, we got back and everything was OK, but no sooner had we gotten back into our seats, and a police car pulled up, parked, got our of their car and walked around the corner heading for the market as well…”so there…”
A half day of driving and we decided to settle into our next campground. It is located just outside of the city of Nottingham, that is the Nottingham of Robin Hood fame. We were also close by the “Sherwood Forest”. These are real places and real legends…kind of neat. The campground was also kind of neat. We camped right on the edge of a small lake, complete with all the waterfowl (with their young), and fish. We even had a fisherman doing what fishermen do… This morning, we again took to the back roads and finally made it to York. We got into town about noon, so after doing a quick “set-up”, we headed off into see what York had to offer. It took us all of 10 minutes to walk to “Clifford’s Tower”, which is all that is left standing of the Castle of York. Clifford’s Tower stands high on a hill, which used to be surrounded by water and a much larger fortress. The harbor has changed dramatically here. Today the city of York has 2 rivers flowing through and around it, but centuries ago, there was a large body of water from a river, but is now much more shallow and narrow. Even today, the River Ouse will take you out to the sea. Just around the corner from the tower is York. We wondered the historic streets, visited a couple of churches, (even had lunch in one), and then found ourselves inside the famous “York Minster”. We had no sooner entered and they were starting a tour, so we jumped right in. It is amazing how much more information you get when you have a tour guide to show you through. The York Minster is the largest Gothic church north of the Alps (540 feet long and 200 feet tall). (The word “Minster” means a place from which people go out to minister of spread the word of God.) Construction was started in 1280 and wasn’t finished for over another 200 years. It has many outstanding “painted” windows throughout, but the one that stands out to me is the one called the “Five Sisters Windows”. These are 5 windows that stand over 50 feet high and are painted, and then each piece is put together with lead (like what we would call a stained glass paneled window). As always, there is so much more to tell you about this “Church”, but it will have to wait.

26 April ’05, Tuesday. Campground at Nottingham
Tuesday morning we were up and at the ferry terminal by 6:30am to catch our “fast ferry” for the crossing to Great Britain. This fast ferry was a huge catamaran that they say is the largest and fastest catamaran in the world. As far a size, it loaded on about 10-12 large truck and trailer combo’s plus a lot of cars, caravans, campers, and busses filled with school kids on a break of some kind. There were 2 movie theatres, and at least 5 restaurants and more on board as well. The crossing took about 3 hours compared to the slow ferries that take 9 hours to cross the same route. Anyway, we left Hoek van Holland and arrived at Harwich England. As we were going through the passport check, they made sure that we remembered that we would be driving on the opposite side of the road from then on… I was hoping that I could follow someone for the first few miles, but that was hopeful thinking, as “Bumble Bee” just couldn’t keep up. Well, put the headlights on, think of what you were doing constantly, and hope you don’t mess up…just go for it… After leaving Harwich, we traveled on for about 30 minutes and we pulled into our first town in England…Colchester. This turns out to be the “first town to be recorded in England”. The first thing we noticed was parking was almost non-existent, and the streets were really narrow, so add this onto driving on the wrong side, we had a challenge in front of us. Now after finding a parking lot and a place we could park in, we had to find the ATM to get some “Pounds”. Of course the ATM doesn’t put out coins, so I had to find a store to buy some little token so I could get change and then run back to the van and hope that I beat the “meter maid” there. Got all that taken care of, now seeing as how we were famished and had some money in our pocket, we went looking for something to eat. As it was, we came across “Computerchinno”, which was a small restaurant and internet café all in one. After having our lunch, catching up on the web page, and email, we headed up the road to find our next campground.
Tomorrow…heading north toward York…

22 April ’05, Friday.
Two days in a row…it’s amazing how good the sun makes you feel… It’s not summer, but it’s still really comfortable and your not getting wet !!! We’ve been hanging around camp, with the exception of a walk into town and breakfast and a look around IKEA. One of our purchases today was a vacuum cleaner. It has been one of those items we’ve thought about many times, so today we got it. It was a $40 Euro item, that was on sale for $9 Euros…that could have been the reason why today was the day… The internet café was next, but didn’t have on-line service this afternoon, so we went to the public library to check our mail. Thanks for the emails… Boy, the campground has a lot of campers still coming in. It gives us a chance to meet a lot of people from all over Europe. Yesterday we met a couple from Great Britain (never too many to meet), and today, one of the couples we met was from the Netherlands but now after traveling in the summer, winter in Portugal. They have their own yellow and white “Bumble Bee”, but about 6 years older. It still looks and runs like new. A few years ago, they shipped their van to Montreal and traveled Canada and western USA. We got an invitation to stop by their condo in Portugal this winter and we definitely look forward to it.
Well, Saturday has arrived. We were up, showered, had breakfast, and were headed out to the front gates of the campground to catch our bus to the annual Flower Parade. We had no idea when we signed up and paid our $8 Euros each, that we were signing up for a whole days events. This parade runs 40km or about 24 miles. We were bussed to Wassenaar (a very small Dutch village) and told that the parade would start in about 30 minutes (11am). As we arrived we were only one of many busses to arrive and settle into the streets to await this parade. It kind of reminded us of the 4th of July parades in Carnation, with the kids all dolled up, riding anything that has wheels, and everything fully decorated with (in this case) flowers… come parade time, we saw the typical motorcycle police start out and then followed with all the kids, and more kids, and more kids… it was a hoot !!! After they had all peddled, walked, or were carried, past, we expected more, but…nothing. That is, not for the next 15 minutes or more and then, the parade that we were expecting, finally reached our village. Now this was a great day for a parade and it was a great parade for this day as well. We saw it all, and it was worth every minute and dollar (Euro) we spent, and more. The cars, trucks, horses, buggy’s, trailers, all decorated with live flowers, peddles, stems, and more were absolutely beautiful. Of course there were the marching bands, twirlers, flaggers, and more to make it complete. You can sure understand why Holland is the “Flower Capital” of the world. Yep, we had a good time !!! By 1, we were back at the bus and were starting off for Scheveningen on the coast. This was a “free stop” for walking on the beach, shopping, eating, or just lazing around on the boardwalk in the sun. We were to be there for 2 hours, so it gave us plenty of time to do it all. By the way, the name “Scheveninggen” was used by the Netherlanders as a test to determine if a person was really Dutch or…possibly, German during WWII. If they could pronounce it correctly, they were Dutch…if not… Back on the bus again and additional tours through the streets of Den Haag to see the palace of the Queen, the Prince’s office, the Summer Home, and a lot more…not a bad $8 Euro value for the day…

20 April ’05, Wednesday.
It’s been 6 days since we checked into this campground and 5 days since we took “Bumble Bee” into Donna’s so that she could get the APK (Safety Inspections in Holland) taken care of for us. Any time you have to go in front of a government agency for something like this, you know that they will find something to hit you with. This was no different, but then not too bad either. The biggest item was a broken coil spring in the rear-end, and a new muffler... It wouldn’t have been that long, except that it ran over a weekend. This afternoon we checked out of our bungalow campground, and rechecked in with “Bumble Bee”. With all the mess of 3 duffel bags we brought back, 3 backpacks, makeup case, and too many bags of “new bargain items” we found in town, and a stop at the grocery store, we had our job cutout for us storing everything into it’s proper place. By the time we had 98% of everything stored, it was time to start dinner. The idea of having dinner and sleeping in “Bumble Bee” tonight was our highlight for the day (it doesn’t take much for us to get “high” over here…). We’ve had a lot of rain the last week and today started out the same. By noon the rain had stopped and by tonight the sun was out. Now that doesn’t mean that it was warm, it just means that the sun was out. This morning till about 11, it was down-right cold, but tonight it was just about pleasant. We’ll hope for more for the weekend. Well, we knew that it would probably happen to one of us, and wouldn’t you know it would be me…I’ve come down with a cold…I know, it’s only a cold, but I was doing so well. I’m going to blame it on stress or possibly, those little kids at Ikea, with their coughs and runny noses running all over the place. Lou is trying to get those vitamins down my throat, but they are sooo damn big…
Tomorrow is “Market Day” in Delft, so we will probably head up to see what kind of deals we can find there.

17 April ’05, Sunday.
Apparently jet-lag is still with us. We force ourselves to stay up until 10pm and then, 3am we are both awake. By 5am we have gotten ourselves back to sleep. When we do wake, we find we have slept to 10. Now this morning, it wasn’t much different, except that we had to be out to pick up our rental car by 10, so we forced ourselves out of bed and to the showers by 9. When we first got in, we picked up a car at the airport. Their rates were good until they tacked on the “airport” surcharge of $60 Euros. That car cost us $140 Euros for 2 days. Yesterday, we went into Delft and found a rental car for $25 Euros per day…we changed carriers… It’s not that we needed a rental car, but it has given us some freedom to see some sites we haven’t seen before. Yesterday we drove into Hoek van Holland, to see the town and the location for the ferry service that hooks us up with Great Britain. There are as many ferries that make the crossing from just about as many locations, but this one has been recommended to us, so we decided to take a look ourselves. We had a nice drive through some wonderful Dutch countryside, and enjoyed the day getting back on the road. Although it was raining pretty much the whole day, it was still a good day. When we got back to the campgrounds Louise found a restaurant right here on the grounds. I don’t know how I had missed that one, so we went up for a nice dinner and a glass of OK wine. Today we headed over to Rotterdam and then made a swing around to see the town of Gouda. Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands. We decided to stay in the car and see all that we could by driving. We did see the location were they boarded the Mayflower in making the first trip to the “New World” America. A little further down the road, we saw where they reconstructed a 18th Century windmill that had been destroyed during WWII. Rotterdam it’s self had almost total destruction during that time, so what you will find there is a lot of very new and very modern buildings and a little of the “Old Town” that dates back to the 15th Century. Most of these run along the canals and is close to the harbor. Gouda turned out to be a wonderful town, again with lots of canals, little bridges, narrow roadways throughout, a wonderful town “Markt” and beautiful old buildings that are dwarfed by the huge and stunning churches. We found a great outdoor restaurant for lunch. This sidewalk cafe sat right at the edge of the Markt. We not only could enjoy a real good “split” meal, we also had the company of interesting people to talk with.

15 April ’05, Friday. Our Temp Homes at the Campground
I don’t know what it is about traveling, but expect the unexpected… We no sooner had stepped right up to the door of our plane for the flight to London and on to Amsterdam, and Louise grabbed my arm and said “Oh my God, we forgot to call Mikleane and tell her where her car was (we had used her van to get to the airport and was to leave the keys in it for her and the family to find when they got back from their trip on Friday). We ran back up the loading ramp and told the agent that “we had to make a very important phone call right away…No, sorry.. But we have too, it is life or death…OK, but hurry, and only one of you”. The message was sent, and Louise was let back onto the plane. We had a direct flight to London and then a wait of 1 1/2 hours before our continued flight to Amsterdam. While waiting for the gate to come up on the board, we found a seat and had a little break from the confines we had experienced from the flight over. Unfortunately, when the gate number came up, we apparently read it wrong and missed our flight… Not good… Fortunately, we were allowed to get onto the flight that would leave 3 hours later, so not all was lost, except time and having to hang around an airport longer than we wanted. By the time we landed in Amsterdam, we were really bushed and a little touchy..
We decided to rent a car at the airport, even if it would cost us an arm and a leg. We just wanted to get to “Bumble Bee”, and then onto the campground were we had a bungalow waiting for us to move into. By the time we got to the campground, after all the delays, it was closed….not good… I walked around looking and praying that I could find someone there and wouldn’t you know it, as luck would have it, I did. About 8:30pm we were able to climb into bed, and we needed it. Now this bed was a dream, at least a dream for two very small children that wanted to sleep in the same TWIN bed… On top of this, we both were wide awake at 3:30am. I finally rolled out of bed and stepped out into the rain and found my way to the shower at 4, I think Louise lasted until 6… About 10 we finally got things together enough to go over to “Bumble Bee”. The agenda was to find out just what the trouble was with her when we left last month. I pulled the battery out and had it checked, and it checked out to be perfect…now what the heck, I guess it could be the starter, but I will have to leave that to the pro’s. We headed off to Utrecht to see Donna, at Turners Campervans, and see if one of her mechanics could come out. Donna was right on it and had one of her men come back with us and we pulled “Bumble Bee” about 30 feet and she started. That done, we headed off to Utrecht. They will go all over her to get her ready for the road, so we will be here in our Bungalow until Monday.

14 April ’05, Wednesday. Congratulations Amy, your wonderful voice is winning it’s way to the top...
The last 5 weeks have just flown by and it has been really good to see all the family and friends again. I also want to say that I am so sorry that we didn’t see everyone and I hope they understand. As always, Louise and I extend an invitation to all of you to come join us…we will have a great time… Mikleane, I hope you and Ric were able to find your van OK….Thanks for everything !!! Leslee, Joelle, thanks for allowing us to barge in at your homes as well… We had a great time and of course really enjoyed the time with the kids !!! Again, the time home just went too quick, but we also were ready to head back to finish our journey. Amy, we are so proud of you…it takes a lot of talent to do the job you did in that talent search contest…congrat’s girl !!!
As we waited for our plane at Sea-Tac, we met a couple from Coeur d’ Alene, that were heading to Italy for their 26th wedding anniversary. At the airport in London, we met Varun, who has a company called The Luxury Travel Show. His company sounds wonderful for those that like to travel and travel in style…check it our on the internet.. www.theluxurytravelshow.com There is lot’s to see and learn. I also met Craig and his wife from San Diego. Craig is a staff writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Everyone with their own great stories… When we went to Delft to rent our second car, one of the men there was doing the paper work setting up our rental agreement and there was another that got on-line and printed out a train schedule with all the stops and where we had to change trains…what a group !!! It has been constant since we arrived in Europe, people bending over backwards to help us, guide us, pay a few coins at the grocery store for us, take a meal that was being prepared for a uncle and giving it to Louise, inviting 4 straingers to a 3 day Turkish Wedding by the groom 2 hours prior to the big event (I don’t think “Mother” was all that impressed..), and many many more…it’s good to get back !!!