me again!

Hello again to everyone.

I last left you in Amsterdam, so I'll continue from there. I woke up the next day and went for a wander around Amsterdam. My train to Eindhoven left at 3pm so I decided to do a boat cruise on the canals and have a look around. The boat cruise got me a bit more oriented with where I was. Let me just say, Amsterdam is quite a big city for its population. Probably because there are so many canals. I loved seeing the houseboats people live in on the river. The legal ones have mains water, gas, electricity etc, and they've all got pot plants everywhere and deck chairs and so on. The other thing about Holland is that bikes rule. There are even triple storey bike parking lots! The cyclists just seem to own the road, riding out whenever they want, and you have to dodge them.

I was left with 2 and half hours so I decided to walk to the Anne Frank House. I didn't imagine I'd have much time to see inside, but thought I'd just see the outside. It was a really nice walk tehre, I got to see heaps of the streets. The housing is all built up 5-8 stories, and there are no gaps between houses. Heaps of houses have windows or balconies overflowing with plants, so they look fantastic. When I got to the Anne Frank house the line was so long I couldn't go in but I had a look at the outside and then walked back to the hostel to pick up my stuff.

Catching the train through the countryside was a nice way to see it. There were lots of fields with cows and lots of canals. This seems to be what Holland is known for, and it's accurate! The train was a double-decker fast train, that only took an hour and a half. I'm so impressed- I think V-line could learn a few things from European trains! Although probably trains are used by more people over here.

1.5 hours after my train arrived, I met up with Ros, Boz and their friends for the start of hockey tour. Their team does short tours every year or so and it so happened that my visit over here coincided with their trip to a tournament in Holland. So I became an honorary member of their team for the weekend. The teams were all invited to stay in tents at the hockey club (a big tent was provided by the club) but the girls had booked a hotel just in case the weather was bad. Luckily they had booked- the tent assigned to our team would not have fit our group (I think there was about 13 of us). So the boys got the tent and we stayed in the hotel.

The Irish team (with one Aussie and one New Zealander living in Ireland!) was the only team that was not 'local' (ie Dutch or German) and therefore we had few interesting cultural experiences- the food (hamburgers with curry sauce, bread with ham and cheese for every meal), the music (3 full days of techno music. They would put any song to techno. I still can't get the techno version of 'If only i could turn back time' out of my head!), the language (obviously every instruction, annoucement or sign was in Dutch) and so on.

However, I had an awesome time, playing my first ever game of hockey, getting to know Ros's friends and the locals and experiencing my first hockey tour! The last night we went for a nice dinner and this was followed up by court (apparently a tour tradition) in which we all received fines for our various tour 'crimes'...

The final day in Holland, we packed up, had our last breakfast of bread, ham and cheese, and returned to Eindhoven. We wandered round for a while before I said goodbye to Ros and her mates who were flying back to Dublin. I was flying to London a bit later, with Emma, one of the girls from hockey tour who is living in London for 6 months. Saying goodbye was not something I was looking forward to, and to make it worse, we got a call about 10 minutes later to say they'd forgotten I'd put my bag in their locker. So we had to go get the bag and do it all over again.

Emma and I wandered round the shops for a bit longer and then got the bus to the airport, getting there just as the others were boarding. We'd been a bit worried about the weight of my bags ( I was flying Ryanair, and was 10kg over the limit). But, you'll be pleased to know I did it again and not a word was said about the weight of my bags!!! (To be fair, Emma's bags were a couple of kilo's heavier than they were on the way, and my hand luggage may have been a bit heavier than it should have been...)

So now I'm in London and it's been an eventful week here- Tony Blair's last day on Tuesday, a bomb defused today...

Emma had offered to let me stay in her place the night we arrived in London, as we didn't get into the city until 10ish. She also had to go to Cambridge for a few days for work and was quite happy for me to stay while she was away, so I've been staying in a very nice apartment in Wapping, near the Tower Bridge! It has a huge balcony and nice views, but it's a bit cold for balconies here at the moment.

Tuesday I decided to go on the bus around the city and work out where to go back to. I like doing this when I arrive somewhere as it gives a great overview of what's where. I also got cheap tickets to 'We Will Rock You', which I went to see later that night. London is insanely huge, and I wish i had more than a week here to explore everything. It's also very exciting, there's just some sort of buzz being here. Although, it is INSANELY expensive (I bought a weekly ticket for the underground which cost 23 pounds- maybe 60 Aussie dollars. But that's cheap. A daily ticket is something like 6 pounds, which is about 15 Aussie dollars.) Hostels, which cost maybe 20-30 dollars elsewhere, cost 20-30 POUNDS ( a pound is roughly $2.40).

The bus tour included a river cruise, so I headed out to Greenwich, although I didnt stay there very long. But I'm in love with the underground- it's just so easy to get around, well signposted and so quick- you rarely wait for a train! Connex should be listening....

'We will rock you' is a musical written by Queen. The story was pretty bad, very like 1984, but cornier. But the music was awesome- a live band and all the Queen hits. So much fun singing along at the end!

I'd better go for now, running out of time at the internet cafe. Hope you're not too cold, and looking forward to my return next week!!!!!

Anneke