i am ster dam

One of the greatest things about England is that all the bank holidays fall on a Monday, allowing for a very convivial jaunt to the Europe. Our latest foray was to Amsterdam, and we are besotted.


geoff liked it faster

Amsterdam is a medley of everything you would expect; tree lined canals, old dutch bicycles (everywhere), scantily clad ladies posing in windows (all day and well into the night), coffee shops that aren't cafes and cafes that aren't coffee shops, sunflowers and poppies, tall tall people taller than geoff and jon and rene, potat frittes with mayo, and mayo, and potat, and mayo.





Then there was the amsterdam we got to experience thanks to the marvelous mr rene and the charming biggie; run down regions just starting to buzz, graffittittiied squatter mansions, once ship building yards now creative hubs (nz osh wouldn't have a bar of it), hidden away, waterfront cafes and an 11th floor club that was. happening. Junk stalls at happy beach, pancakes at the pancake palace, back stories to the red light district (apparently all garnered from an open day), inexpensive, exquisitely ordered second-hand boutiques (saw jon coming home sporting a new waistcoat, cummerbund, silk scarf and tie, and la a floral swim cap and bikini), beer, coffee, patat, mayo, beer, coffee, patat, but no wall food. This trip.




And finally there is the Amsterdam that you find when you get lost, cycling at night along the canals, a moments distraction or intentional disorientation leading to a the inevitable italian bar serving birra morretti and limoncello. Cycling home, reorientating, cycling home again, now in the rain, didn't we just pass that bridge? gaze into that lamp lit lounge? Find our way home?


all in all, it was pretty great. thanks guys for being there. for coming there. you know who you are.

somehow we only have half a memory card worth of photos...but you can check out some more pics at http://web.mac.com/rene.klinkhamer

Ruby tuesday

Ruby Xya Jade BatachEl lives in Feilding. Apparently she's a bit of a joker.

boys vs grrls again

apparently a baby doing a forward roll.



you might need to ask kerryn more about how it feels to be a host

Stocktake

boy
handy puncture repair kit
alan key set
lube
bryl cream
pipe tobacco
bike lights
burger king ketchup and mayo (x4)
sun glasses
spare change (euro and squidlets)
after shave
hacksaw jim duggan badge
hats (austria/italy, london)

grrl
vanilla spice body butter
beads
perfume puffer
lip gloss (x4)
moisturiserer
hair ties (x6)
clips
badges
hat (london)
nail buffer

just another monday night in chis wick

balls

nice one geoff for winning the winningnest winner thing your team could win. they are champions of some kind of what not or other.

photos from the semi cos we were too busy to go (see welsh)

thanks wales

so. after being on the gam for a few weeks (somekindaglandularviruslybacterialinfectionate), decided to take 2 weeks out from working to try the living side of life.
was a treat to have easter in paris. then to go for a 'spontaneous' camping trip. ohmy. how innovative.
so we picked up our wicked camper (decked out previa), and after some sound touring and weather advice from geoff and kerryn respectively ditched our original plan of slumming it in cornwall, opting for the wild welsh west. oh and how it was wild.
DAY 1
driving a little. maybe 4 hours. something. driving. arriving at the gower peninsula in the dark (around 9PM now yeah! but we were chasing the sun. it was doing a nice job of keeping ahead. darn.) trying to find a suitable campsite. driving. down a track, up a wee hill the flatest spot we could find. mmmmm. olives and anchovies. sleep.

DAY 2
waking up to the view of the morning looking out all the way to new zealand (or ireland, or cornwall or something). had happened to park ourselves on the highest point of the gower peninsula amongst the sheep and the camo mountain ponies. best sleep in years. arrived @ Rhosilli and worm head and spent the day watching the sun come up and go down. found a small rubbish dump to camp on.


DAY 3
Journey not much to speak of. lunchy siesta @ new gale. then.... St David's (western tip of wales i reckon). and again jala invoke the spirit of good random chance happening upon the niftiest camping gourd in all of the UK. . thru some weird twist of regional planning fate all the beach settlements have wee concentration camps of massif caravans crammed together in the closest possible resemblence of suburban city living (so you get to go on holiday with your neighbours)... everywhere you would like to find a nice quiet spot to put your dodgy camper they have already arrived... but not . no. careful management and planning have kept the visual impact and environmental pollution to a happy onlykindauglyandannoying. best thing was their camp site was 50 acres of grassy meadow in front of the concentration caravans so we have pretty much the coastal cliff vantage all to ourselves. and the ramblers rambling 3 feet from our camp site. but they weren't too noisy. dunno about us.

oh yeah DAY 4
kinda blurred into day 3 cos we didn't move an inch cept for to reach for our engrossing and enriching reading material.




then we came home
which is nice

ps = pencarnan camp gourd in pembrokshire national park