just another morning here

Just checking weather forecast, and logging geocache as quickly as possible. We leave Les Ponts de Ce demain matin, don’t think we have internet at the next campsite so really signing off now. Tried to get photos up this week but it was so painful I gave up. Haven’t done much today, just around campsite – supermarket shopping, visited ‘Le musée des coiffes et des traditions‘ this afternoon (so weird it was interesting!), then took the kids swimming, went hunting a geocache then did a BBQ dinner for everyone. Plenty of sitting around reading, eating and drinking inbetween too. Has been a good week in that respect!

Off to Rambouillet tomorrow, expecting to do more cycling, one or two trips into Paris, and a nostalgic tour around Le Vesinet as well (where my grandmother used to live when I was a kid). Should be fun too, will virtually see you all in a couple of weeks

These were on my list as two separate activity days for half term but we ended up amalgamating them in real life so they might as well get lumped together in a blog post as well. The muddling of them happened mainly because we ended up wanting to go to town twice for various things at the museum.

So, yesterday … we got ready and went into town first thing. Anna had a shield (that she won from a music festival back in the spring) that she wanted to get engraved, so we did that en route to the museum. Then realised why there are so many years left out on the shield as it was expensive! I didn’t realise and had agreed to the engraving already, but I am not surprised that some people haven’t bothered to put their names on it.

Anyway. Went via a couple of estate agents to the museum where there was a ‘Meet the Romans’ activity on – there were a couple of Roman soldiers in the museum alongside a table of various artefacts so we spent a while there, and then opened the Romans activity box in the next room. That was a bad idea, as everyone who visited the soldiers then came next door and pounced on the activities too – no problem with that in itself but as designated key holders for the box we were trying to keep track of everything and it was really busy – I think we lost one of the dressing up outfits but it was nigh on impossible to keep an eye on it all! Thankfully the museum people were very understanding.

We went home for lunch, and then had a crafty afternoon – well the girls and I did, anyway. Josiah wrote a thank you note and sealed the envelope with a special wax seal from a set he had for his birthday, and that was about all he could manage, he then slumped in front of the tv for a while. Everyone here has been slightly under the weather with colds/general tiredness and he was worse yesterday so tv and honey & lemon drinks were the order of the day for him. Nothing really bad, just that sort of illness that comes out as being really on edge and easily upset, not great when you are part of a family and other people are likely to annoy you all the time!

Meanwhile I helped the girls plan and start stitching little cross stitch bracelets that we’d picked up in a craft shop in town, so that was a nice afternoon. Reminded me how much I used to like cross stitch, haven’t really done any for years, I might finish Josiah’s birth sampler one of these days!

Emma, Robyn & Lola came round to play for a bit and have tea with us, so that was a nice end to the day.

The kids watched Ren & Stimpy before bed – got an old video from a friend who was chucking it out and we used to love Ren & Stimpy years ago so a good chance to reminisce, there!

Today we did some cooking in the morning. I made chicken & veg soup from yesterday’s leftovers, cheesy Shepherd’s pie for tomorrow’s dinner and some Chocolate Orange Potato cake. Josiah made an Apple & Apricot crumble with very little help. Then they watched tv and the girls got their stitching out again, all felt very relaxed and lovely.

Then we headed into town after lunch for a craft workshop at the Museum. They’ve had Roman things on every day this week I think, and today was Mosaic Making. We’d arranged to meet friends there too so spent a pleasant hour or so roaming the museum with them as well.

After that came a violin lesson for Joe, some house viewings with my parents who were down for the day, and then a lovely meal out with everyone in the evening. Managed to meet two lots of friends in the pub as well which was quite amusing.

Tomorrow is ‘mystery trip’ day – oooh exciting! And mysterious!

Our last full day in Amsterdam so we maxed it out. Drove into Amsterdam, Steve likes the challenge of driving through foreign cities, and actually the car park cost wasn’t much different to the price of tram tickets for all five of us. We parked near the Vondelpark and walked down to the Museumplein.

Went into the Van Gogh museum and all of us really enjoyed it; the kids followed a treasure hunt trail thing which helped them get lots out of it, and they received stickers and postcards at the end so they were happy.

Had a toastie from a cafe on the Museumplein, and then popped back to the car for the scooters, and spent a couple of hours walking/scootering through the Vondelpark, again very pleasant.

After that we decided to drive up to Zaandam to see Zaanse Schans, a very touristy little village where a number of windmills have been moved. Walked round admiring windmills and a little cheese-making place, and had an ice cream there before heading back to the campsite for dinner.

Today we headed for the city centre. A five minute walk from the campsite took us to a tram stop – interesting to see all the graffiti under the bridge we had to cross – the kids were surprised about it all but we decided we all quite liked it. Interesting to discuss the implications of a more libertarian society. The Netherlands seemed to us to be a strange dichotomy of a very ordered society, and yet with this laissez faire approach to some things … anyway. We went straight to Dam Square and looked around there for a while, the children desperate to spend their holiday money! Anna bought a bag, Abbie got a necklace, and Joe bought Spiderman 2 on DVD!!

We went into the diamond centre and looked at expensive jewelry, then found a a friendly diamond cutter who showed us the diamond he’d been working on.

Had a picnic lunch afterwards, stopped to watch a really good band in Dam Square, then walked down a shopping street looking at the similarities and differences in shops.

We went into the Amsterdams Historisch Museum and looked around there for the afternoon, which was really interesting, if a little big to be able to take everything in! After that everyone was fairly tired so we had an icecream then jumped on another tram to Central Station – a beautiful building but disappointingly mainly behind scaffold at the moment. From there we went back to the campsite.

After tea we sat around writing postcards, eating sweets, visiting the goats, the kids went off scootering round the site while we sat enjoying a beer and intervals of child-free time! It began to rain during the evening and didn’t stop until mid-morning the next day.