Twisted Cyclepaths

Much like visiting our other multi-day cities, Amsterdam was an absolute whirlwind of business. With this in mind here is a snapshot of what we got up to.

Day one: Wild parking in the Netherlands is illegal so we decided to stay in a paid campsite for a few nights. We didn't however plan for it to be so filled with animals, bonus win.

Our friend Alfie came over to stay for a couple of nights meaning things were a bit cramped in Moira but with some crafty packing away we all fit in.

Moira all parked up next to one of three lovely sunsets we experienced while staying in that site.

The goats too also had their own little tree house / shed to sleep in at night.

Day Two: we kicked the day off with our new pancake batter writing tool to make some funky pancakes. Not quite there yet but practice makes perfect

Our cycle into Amsterdam, already over an hour, was extended somewhat by Danni's tyre having a hole in it. We did manage to get back on the road but since we were delayed and took an extra long route we only made it to the outskirts by 6pm.

Another cause of our delays. A family of ducklings coming to enjoy our lunch with us in the sun

After arriving in the outskirts of the city and going to a few shops we called it a day and started the long cycle back with a plan to start much earlier tomorrow and take a more direct route. Lots of lovely greenery on the way to enjoy.

Classic Dutch windmill on the cycle back.

The downside of the extensive waterways: sometimes the road lifts up and the diversions for fixing bridges are eye-wateringly long.

Day Three: Starting early and cycling directly were helped by taking the tram from the outskirts into the centre of the city, which is the worst bit to cycle in anyway due to the quantity of speedy cyclists. Finally in the centre proper we could enjoy lots of the rings of canals lined with trees. While not our favourite city at all its hard to deny that this was a capital city absolutely filled with nature.

Much of our day in the centre revolved around the Munttoren: a tower from the medieval walls of the city later repurposed into a clock tower for this church.

One of the more surprising finds in the city was Mouse Mansion museum. Based off the popular children's book series these exhibits were tiny worlds of rooms where the fictional mice lived. The attention to detail of rolls of toilet paper, magazines, or even a soap in the tiny sink made this such a cool place to visit, and it was free as well!

Trying to avoid the extensive collection of 20 euro museums we went to the much less busy city archive instead with all of its free exhibits and its location in the bottom of a bank this was a really impressive museum.

When the evening came we made our way round a few bars in the city centre and tried out our new board game.

Day Four: You can clearly see that the goats were stressed and going to miss us as we were packing up to leave. Or perhaps is that me projecting onto them...?

After leaving the very chill campsite for the last time we made our way to a market in the local town to buy some things that we didn't need then headed down south towards The Hague for the next day's adventure.