Hallo and Merry Christmas!

So apparently here in Holland, they have 2 days of Christmas. Our kind of place! One day for each side of the family, so we're told. So we actually arrived in Amsterdam, from Heathrow, with no delays!! Happy face. Our hotel is literally over the top of the railway tracks, so it was very easy to find from the airport. As you know, Holland is famous for it's bicycles, but that still didn't prepare us for the sight of the bike parking lot outside the train station. The photo doesn't do it justice. Bek has nearly been run over by bikes a couple of times since we've been here. She doesn't really like bikes.Last night, we went on a canal cruise which was just beautiful. I know we use that word a lot, but picture a low to the water boat, through the canals and harbour, with Christmas lights, arched bridges and houseboats lining the sides of the canals. Not to mention we were crunching the ice sheets as we made our way through the water. We did find it a bit warmer than in London, however. After that we had Christmas dinner at the hotel before setting off through the red light district (we didn't really see much, we went around the outside of it) to find the Ice Bar. It was -10 inside, and highly overrated. We still had a good time - nice drinks too :)

This morning we were supposed to meet for a day tour at 9.30am. This would have been great, if someone (not mentioning any names... ok it was me) had changed the time on our alarm clock. Unfortunately, we woke up one hour later than we had expected. So it was a little bit of a rush, which was a shame, considering breakfast was incredible. With lots of weird and wonderful things to try that we didn't recognise. We hope to enjoy it tomorrow.

Today was a lot of fun, we set off on our tour to the countryside to start. We first went to the clog making factory (could have gotten you a giant pair, Andrea!) and that was really interesting. They use these weird machines, kind of like key cutting machines, that replicate one clog to make another. Way too many souvenirs to buy there - everything was lovely. Right next door to that was the windmill place, where Bek made a new friend. And she laughs at me for making friends... This guy was rather nice, and asked Bek to take a photo of him with his camera. This seemed to start something, and we ended up taking about 5 photos for various people. And so began the friendship between photo guy and Bek. Over the course of the day he asked Bek to take 4 photos for him at various photo stops along the way. Hmm.

We loved the cheese farm - yum! They told us how to make cheese, and we got to taste some! Yay! We're now all set to buy a cow when we get home, and make our own delicious cheese. "Cheese Grommit".

Volendam was next, a small fishing village nort of the city (yes I left out the h on purpose). Here we should mention our guide, Derek, who impressed us with his language skills. He started the tour by introducing himself in Dutch, English, Spanish, and French. :O He spent the tour explaining things first in English, and then translating into fluent Spanish as the majority of our bus were Spanish. On talking to him later, we found out he actually speaks 6 languages, including Dutch. Amazing. Not only that, but at the clog making place, the guy teaching us cloggery did his entire speech in English, French, Spanish and Italian. Wow. Very cool.

On the way from Volendam to Marken, we went on a dyke. (No jokes from the Aussies, there) It went over a huge frozen lake called Ijosel (we think) - it was amazing! ----------------------->

There were people ice-skating on it and everything. So very cool. Literally.

We got back to Amsterdam and had to change to the city tour bus, which had a dead engine. A bit of a delay there. On a positive note, Bek took a liking to the tour guide on the replacement bus. :) We slept for some of the tour (it was a tad on the boring side - a recording) but the diamond factory we stopped at was very.... shiny. :D We like shiny things. We sort of listened to how diamonds were cut, but it was a bit crowded and everyone was a little bit distracted by the bling.

Looking forward to steak night tonight! And an early start for Bek's birthday tomorrow, but we have absolutely loved Amsterdam. Thinking of Tom and Martha the whole time, thanks for the tip to go on the canal cruise - worth every penny (I can finally say that literally!). Germany tomorrow! A stein on me for the birthday girl (an ancient 24!).

Love,

Bek and Belle

P.S. Whopper of an embarrasing moment last night. Whimper. Brace yourself.

Ok, so we sat down to dinner, a couple of hours after entering the country, only to find our menu was a little bit hard to understand. We could make out some words, like the main course had guinea fowl and something else, and one of the 2 entrees was fish. (It was a set menu for Christmas dinner) So waiter comes over and Bek politely asks for some help translating what some of the dishes were. There were 2 entrees and 2 mains, and a dessert. The first entree was vis, which waiter said was fish, and the other was fish as well, which we checked with him. "They're both fish, then?" Bek passed on the fish, and I asked for one of them. We each chose one of the mains, which we thought were steak and guinea fowl, and he gave us a strange look but went off to tell the chef. As we were waiting for the meal, I was looking at the menu and something occurred to me. I could understand half of it. One of each of the meals. Oh dear. It appeared that the meals were in Dutch, but had the English translation underneath, so really there was only one option for each course. :( No wonder waiter was giving us strange looks.