A need to be consistent.

Remember the analogy I gave not long ago to sailing? Well, that seems to be my problem since, in spite of my best intentions, I failed to utter a peep over the last several days. (we've been frantically tacking....or something)

The thing is, after traipsing around Paris for an entire day, it was all I could do to even turn on the computer, let alone figure out what to say.

Meanwhile.....since our guests were going to be taking the train to Paris on the Wednesday, I offered to once again get them to Amsterdam. This time though, by making a slight detour to have a look at the Afluitdijk

We were making use of the replacement car, which surprisingly had enough room, including for four suitcases. By enough, I do mean barely, but we did it.
Betty is pretending she doesn't mind sitting there....
On the way, we stopped in a little village called Giethoorn

..to snarf down some lunch since, even though we wanted to look around a bit, we really weren't too sure how much time we actually had, since the train was leaving Amsterdam Centraal at something like 16:20.
Giethoorn is supposedly the "Venice of the north", although we all agreed that it was certainly on a much smaller scale. If you wanted to step out your front door and go almost anywhere in the Netherlands on your boat, like these folks...



Giethoorn is the place.

And now for a brief Dutch lesson. Like the "ch" in the scottish "loch", the "G" in Giethoorn is pronounced in a similar fashion. Also, the verb "gieten", means "to pour" and a watering can, is a "gieter".
Not like James Cagney carrying a "heater", but the pronounciation is close.


We did manage to get to the train station at something like five to four, which worked out perfectly. I only took the following two photos to give an impression of the bike parking at the train station. Some quarter million passengers go through this station every day, and around 6000 of them leave their bikes. That's just an estimate however. Could be more.
I didn't quite make it back to the Hengelo area in time to pick up the Audi, so we had to do that in the morning. Since we were on the way to Bonn, that meant having to transfer luggage yet again...
They had drained the fuel, changed the filters and acted like it was not a big deal. Total cost €270. The biggest surprise was that the costs were covered by the leasing company.
Huh?
They must have some sort of idiot clause in there some where...

I had a fairly good idea that it wasn't that big a *deal, but you just never know with car dealerships. I figured we'd be in for some sort of nasty surprise.

*there are those who will run up to 20% gasoline in their diesels when the temperature gets down below -20°C. Keeps the fuel from crystalising....

That's going to be about it for now.....with just a couple interuptions, this has already evaporated a considerable part of the day. I might just float on in later though.