amsterdam

Out the front of our motel
Amsterdam tourist spot at the Museum

Richard on the sign!

Bronte on the sign

In the Heineken factory House boat museum on one of the canals

Well we arrived in Amsterdam on Friday and found our accommodation. Once we booked in we decided to have a look around the town. Had dinner and then decided to go for a walk around the red light district for a look. Had a bit of a laugh doing that and then went back to the motel.

Saturday we did a tour of the Heineken factory which was much better than I thought it was going to be. It was really very interesting and you got 3 free beers. Three for free!!!! We then decided to go on a canal cruise so we could see all the houses and canals and get some perspective on the city. Had a bit more of a walk around the city and then went back to the motel.

Went out to a night club at midnight and it was really a good night. Will have to elaborate the night club in person............????? But it is Amsterdam :-)

Sunday was our last day and we went to the Anne Frank house for a look, which was kind of weird knowing what happened to the people who were hiding out in there. We also went to the houseboat museum which was interesting to see how 2500 people live in Amsterdam and what they call home.

At 5.00pm we headed for Schipol Airport in Amsterdam to get our flight to London, it was 2 hours late leaving which was crap! Anyway we are right now in Singapore waiting for our connecting flight to Sydney. Not long to go now.

Will catch up with you all once we return. See you soon.

rotterdam

The Euromast in RotterdamView from the mast over Rotterdam

Bronte on the ride in the lift to the top of the Euromast

Today we stopped in Rotterdam on our way to Amsterdam. We only spent around 3 hours in Rotterdam. Enough time to have lunch and the visit the Euromast (another tower). The tower was really different as it had a lift at the top viewing platform that took a whole section of the platform an extra 85 metres to the top of the mast. This section similar to the giant drop in Dreamworld also rotates to give you a 360 degree view as you go up and then at the top it continues to rotate so you get a good view of the entire city. It was really very eerie as there were glass sections in the floor and it looked as if you were hanging out over the road below at 185 metres looking straight down. We left Rotterdam and arrived in Amsterdam at around 4pm and made our way the the hotel. Went into the city for a look around but we will do some more tomorrow and post it separately.

brussels

Place Royale, in the front of the Royal Palace
The atomium built in 1958

The little boy pissing statue.

Wednesday we arrived in to Brussels and it was fairly late so we got some dinner and went back to the hotel. The hotel was in a fairly swish area with snobby clothes shops and restaurants.

We got up and went to Grand Place which is the centre of Brussels with really nice old buildings and the Hotel De Ville. Just down from the Grand Place is the Little Boy Pissing Statue. The statue is only really small, about 56 cm tall and it was a bit of a let down considering it is the catch cry fountain for Brussels.

We then headed for the "Expo 1958" Park where the atomium is. Wow it was amazing! We paid and went inside, you could go to the very top in the elevator and it was a very bizarre view. When you came back down you could also walk to 4 of the other spheres which was also a strange feeling. It was hard to believe they built this back in the 50's. As with other world expo structures it was meant to be temporary and dismantled after the expo. They have just recently spent millions of Euro's and 2 years restoring it.

We did not see Kim Klijsters or John Claude Van Damme while we were in Brussels but we did see lots of smog.

Finished the day off in the Royal Palais Garden opposite the Royal Palace eating chocolate waffles. Friday we head to Holland.

dresden

The Transparent Volkswagen Factory

This is the actual production line throught the windows, if you look closely.

Paul, David, Bronte and Richard in Dresden.

We left Berlin on Tuesday morning and headed for Dresden. Once we arrived in Dresden we caught up with some friends from Adelaide, Paul and David. We spent the day with them and they left in the afternoon for Prague. We tried to do the factory tour of Volkswagen but the tours were not running at the moment and they advised us by email that the factory tours were closed for the week. Well we decided to go and have a look anyway and it was worth it. The factory is called "The transparent factory" and yes it is made of glass and you can see the cars being made from through the glass. It was very interesting and very very clean and organised. The people making the cars wore all white and looked more like doctors.

Dresden received bombings from the Americans in WWII and being part of the old Eastern Germany, nothing was fixed and a lot of the town was left in ruins . It is only recently, as in the last 5 years that they have rebuilt some of the buildings. The town was really nice and quite well organised with public transport and shops etc. They are still doing heaps of work.

Off to Brussels on Wednesday, a 9 hour train trip!!

berlin

Brandenburg gates

The Berlin wall that stills stands today as a memory

Our New Berlin tour group leader

Check point Charlie

Well we are finally in Berlin after a 7 hour train trip from Stuttgart. Arrived late in the afternoon so we just managed to find a hostel, book in and have some dinner. We also got some flyers from the hostel for different tourist stuff which included a free walking tour. We decided to go on the free tour which started at 11.00 a.m. The tour was fantastic. It took us to some of the most visited and the most important places that form part of the German history. The tour guide "Chris" as pictured above made the tour even more enjoyable. He was really like an actor and was quite funny to explain the rather serious stories of the past.

Once we finished the tour we headed to the TV tower for a look, it is 368 metres tall and the observation deck is 203 metres. This gave us a good look over the city and a bit of perspective on the size of Berlin.

After the tower we went to a part of the Berlin wall which has been preserved for memory and tourists I would imagine. It really makes you know how lucky you are to be brought up in Australia.

Tomorrow or Tuesday we are heading to Dresden for a look, it's just a short trip south of Berlin. We are trying to organise a tour of the Volkswagen factory. This is the factory that makes prestige VW's. The ones that cost about $150000 that Australia does not get. These cars are hand made in a factory purely for them and the factory is only about 4 years old. Apparently it is a day outing kind of like Sea World without the rides. We'll see!!

stuttgart

Mercedes Benz museum
Famous Gull wing roadsterMerc's every where

After leaving Geneva we headed to Stuttgart, Germany. Home of Mercedes Benz and Porsche. It was a very long train trip and we didn't get into Stuttgart till 10pm.
On our first day we went to the Mercedes Benz Museum, it is a bit out of town and €14 for entry but worth every penny. The building the Museum is in is a modern marvel. It is seven stories high. The museum tells a story, not only of Benz but also of what was the world was like at the time. We thought that it would only take an couple of hours but it took nearly all day, we also got there early enough to get our names on the Engine plant tour. Inside the Museum is every sort of Benz you could imagine, right from the first car ever made through to the modern cars. There were also truck, buses and Benz's used as taxi's etc. In the engine plant we got to see the 2,0 litre Kompresser engines being made, it all looks very simple as it goes together step by step.
Porsche Museum tomorrow..... or maybe not as Richard is all Car'd out.

Geneva

Peugeot´s new limo, yes the grass is real.

Shiny chrome Toyota Auris (our next Corolla)

A very economical Hummer H3

This fountain is over 135m tall

After leaving Interlaken we decided on going to Geneva. We changed our minds on where we were going to head about 10 times. The main reason we wanted to go to Geneva was because the 77th international motor show was on, it is suppose to be the best in the world and a lot of car makers leave it until Geneva to release new models. We saw lots of new release models, some nice and some irrelevant to us in Australia. We spent 5 hours at the motor show and still didn't see every thing, the place is huge. The car makers spend heaps on making their stands the biggest and the best. My favourite was the Jeep stand with a really cool water feature, I have a short movie on my phone for those who want to see it when we get home.

The hostel we stayed at in Geneva was good, it also had cooking facilities that we used as the restaurants and take away were still expensive, (we thought it may have been cheaper in the bigger city)