Germany and Amsterdam - lands of beer steins and wooden shoes!

The last 2 days of our tour included stays in Germany and Amsterdam. These days went by so quickly as we were doing a lot of traveling by bus and small village stops that unfortunately there is not much to write about but I'll do my best.

We drove to Germany and were introduced to the country with a Rhine river cruise. It was very peaceful and just a little nippy but good all the same. There is some beautiful countryside to see in Germany so we are glad we got to see a small portion of it. During our drive we saw a sign for a town calls worms lol!

We stayed in a hotel called the bellevue which has a very apt name as we could see the bell tower from our room, but we didn't realize until we went to bed that we could also hear the bells, every 30 mins and every hour they chimed 10 times! It was so loud that we were awake pretty much the whole night and needed intensive therapy to get over the ringing of the bells in our ears!

The hotel was really nice tho, and apart from the bells it was great.

The next day we headed to Amsterdam and began the day with a canal cruise in a glass topped boat.. The canals are beautiful but apparently we had arrived just after the queens birthday celebrations in Amsterdam so there was a fair bit of rubbish around, but we could look past that to enjoy the city.

We spent some time in souvenir shops and we both bought some wooden shoes and postcards. They were everywhere but it the traditional tourist thing to do. We walked past a few coffee shops during our time there, and they smelt funny! We didn't go in tho, but some people on our tour had cookies with their coffee and they were very loud and happy for the rest of the night.

Our tour director took us through the red light district of Amsterdam and it was an interesting view of the city and the way people live there. It seemed to be very much tourist driven though and we felt sorry for the girls but what can you do? We couldn't take photos though as security guards come after you so no pics for the blog here... Sorry!

We had dinner in a nice place and as it was my birthday, there were celebrations, and it was also our last night together on your as the tour ended the next day so we were all celebrating the end of the tour and reminiscing about the good times we all had.

The next day we had a very long bus drive through Holland, Belgium and France to Calais where we boarded the ferry again to get to the UK and head for our hotel.

We will be visiting relatives and driving our hire car around the UK for 12 days and we are so looking forward to it, but I think a good nights rest is in order!