Haarlem, Den Hague, Centraal

The NL has proved to be what I expected, every aspect. A few days ago I caught a train straight from Eddie's house to Haarlem, a wonderful little town to the west of Amsterdam. Haarlem has a lot of canals aswell, cobblestone streets and small eateries, cafe's and bars, I took the liberty of finding a good pub to relax at for a while and drank some local beer. Dutch beer is great, and so is the variety of it! Just last night I drank a type called Gulden Draak which is 10.5%, wonderful stuff.

Yesterday I also made my way down to Den Hague (try to pronounce it and you'll get it wrong), unfortunately it was raining, but that was alright as I enjoy the rain, but it did bring a quick end to my time there, I was planning to catch a bus 5K's west to Scheveningen to check out the beach and cafe's/shops there, but couldn't do that either. The most I did in Den Hague was wonder around looking for a place to eat, getting wet until I bought an umbrella. Possibly an hour into this trip I caught the train back to Amsterdam Centraal where I decided to go for another wander, just getting more wet, I decided to catch the train back to Eddie's.

Pretty much soon as I got back here the rain decided to stop! Apparently the weather here is like that.. can be cloudy and rainy one minute, sunny the next, and back to rainclouds. Anyway, Eddie and I went for a drive to the old dockyards not far from Centraal, this is where a lot of industry was (which has now been moved downstream), so this dockland section has been renovated, new buildings built among the old, and people live there! It's real nice, we went to some pub overlooking a canal and drank some beers, was good!

Now as of writing this it's Friday afternoon, I accidentally slept in till 11 so havn't bothered to make a move anywhere, besides.. it keeps raining. Am really enjoying this freedom which comes from traveling on your own; you can go do what you want when you want, so I have been taking my time with everything! this weekend coming up Eddie and I are going to a town called Breda, not far from the Belgium border, will be checking out a museum on Graphic Design (www.graphicdesignmuseum.com) which is something I've been looking forwards to for moooooonths!!! yeeiiw.