Bicycles, Joints and Jedward!

On arriving in Amsterdam we headed straight to Camping Zeeburg, which is well connected to the centre of the city; just 20 minutes by tram or bike.


The bicycle reigns supreme in the Netherlands. There are cycle tracks everywhere you look and they’re quite often a good distance away from the main roads. It’s amazing to see so many people, especially children, tearing along on them.

Everybody seems to ride an upright town bicycle that would look quite old fashioned in the UK. Our mountain bikes look quite out of place, but there’s not a lot of call for mountain bikes in a country where the highest point is just 322 metres! 27% of the Netherlands is actually below sea level!


Cycling into the centre of Amsterdam was a little hairy. Bikes were coming at us from all angles at some busy junctions, and we weren’t too sure of the rules.

The hardest part was actually finding a parking space i.e. a railing to chain the bikes to. We were very excited a little later on when we saw the ultimate solution; a multi-storey bike park!!


Seeing the city by boat was great, and the tour we went on was full of interesting facts. There are over 100 kilometres of canal in Amsterdam, far more than we had first thought.

On average one car per week ends up in one of the canals, but three had apparently been fished out the week we visited. Perhaps the drivers had spent a little too long in one of the city’s many ‘coffee shops’, which sell rather more cannabis than they do coffee!


We spent Saturday night watching the Eurovision Song Contest in one of the many bars in the city, where Jedward were surprisingly popular. Let's not talk about Blue shall we!!

The following day the streets were full of people watching Amsterdam’s main football team, Ajax, win the Dutch league – queue lots of beeping car horns, fireworks and singing!

We spent a lot of time simply wandering around Amsterdam, but we did the usual tourist things too; admiring the architecture and giggling at the prostitutes in their shop windows!


We also visited Anne Frank’s house, where the Frank family hid from the Nazis for 2 years from 1942. The story of the family is now so well known, but to see the actual building really brings the story to life.

All in all, we really enjoyed Amsterdam. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s very picturesque and has a lively centre.

From here we’re hitting Noord-Holland and then Friesland (home of the cows!) before moving on to Bremen and Hamburg for the weekend.

TTFN!