Yesterday (Tues 18th) was devoted to a short family get together. Nina's sister Donna and her husband Chris (plus their friends Max and Karen) were in town for a couple of days at the start of a boat trip from Amsterdam to Budapest. Thus we spent much of the day with them sightseeing (with somewhat of a focus on the red light district, at least in the photographs) and then a very interesting canal cruise with dinner in the evening.

The dinner cruise took us around the city on some of the more minor canals so we got to see a much more residential side of Amsterdam. Among other things we saw many house boats tied up on the side of the various canals learned that the use of house boats as residences started after World War II when accommodation was scarce, and that today the moorings for those house boats are valuable real estate fetching up to Euro 500,000.

Today (Wed 19th) Nina spent the morning in Amsterdam catching up with her family while I readied the truck for the next stage of our journey, to England by ferry, from a port called The Hook of Holland to the English port of Harwick.

I was a bit anxious about the drive to the ferry terminal, specifically narrow secondary roads and parking at the port while we waited for the ferry to load. However I was pleased to find that my fears were unfounded. The ferry terminal allowed us to park in the loading area even though we arrived many hours before boarding. Indeed they boarded the waiting vehicles hours before departure and allowed us to get to our cabins well before the vessel was to depart. Very different to the ferry to/from Iceland.