We ended up in Belgium on the day that Cindy, Brett and Rick rang to say that they were finally ready to hit the road. We went to stay in a small town not far from the French border so that they could meet up with us the next day. We gave them some directions to where we were staying and waited for there arrival that night. Unfortunatly Jamie's instructions turned out to be too confusing for them. Not helped by the late hour they were arriving, so we decided to meet up in the morning.
Morning came and we packed up our tent and car. Then we tried to call them to work out where to meet but for some reason none of the calls went through. So we thought we might see if we could find them near the lighthouse that Brett said he saw while on the phone the night before. We found the light house but no sign of Bertha (the name of the campervan). We sent them a text to tell them that we would wait for them at the lighthouse. After about an hour of waiting we finally got a call from Brett to say that they found the campsite and had been looking for us for the last hour. So they turned back around and met up with us, finally the fellowship of the euro-campers was together.
First things first we decided to head towards Amsterdam. We knew that Bertha wouldn't make it in one trip so we just headed toward Holland for a while then pulled off the main road looking for u place to pull up for the night. We found a large grassed parking lot in what seemed like the middle of nowhere and seeing as how it was deserted thought we may just stay there for the night. After about 30 minutes two guys pulled into the parking lot to fill there tralier with rocks that were pilled up on one side of the parking lot. We approached them to see if it was fine for us to stay the night. One of the men turned out to be the caretaker of the tourist farm behind the parking lot. He used to be the owner of the farm that had been in his family since 1740's, his son didn't want to take it on so he sold it to the tourist department and now he looks after the farm for them. He was more than happy for us to stay the night and showed us around, he even gave us some shots of his homemade spirits.
The next morning, after drinking way too much, we packed up and headed to Amsterdam, where we set up at a camping grounds on the edge of the city. There was a metro station near the grounds, so it was a handy place to be able to head into the city and try some more of the local treats. We basically just spent the next two days over-indulging and walking around the same block (unintentionally) at one point. We also managed to find at random a free street party. After Amsterdam we headed to the north of Holland to a town called Groningen, to do a little more 'relaxing' before leaving The Netherlands. On the second day, while we were going for a drive to check out some of the country side, we came across a cow that was having trouble giving labour, with the calf half hanging out. Being the good citizens that we are we thought that we had better alert the farmer. That turned out be be a little difficult, the farmers wife was only at home and there was a major language barrier that took two trips to the farm house to explain the problem. But eventually the farmer came and the cow and calf were saved, HOORAY.
