So here it is.After we left our friend Dave's place, and Brussels we drove up to Vught to see Anne and Erik. We arrived extremely early and washed lucy. It took a ton of time to wash all the bird crap off the roof but it came off nicely. After washing lucy we hung out in Vught for the afternoon until Anne and Erik arrived home from work. They served us a wonderful chilly and we had a fantastic evening.
The following morning Emilie and I drove for the last 30 minutes of our trip. The drive to Utrecht was uneventful and we listened to Cat Steven's 'Tea For the Tillerman' for the 400th and final time in 4 months. I will never listen to him again. It was a fitting end to the circle. Upon arrival in Utrecht we were able to sell Lucy for a reasonable sum. She really turned out to be a fantastic investment and it turned out that she payed for herself within 60 days of arrival in Europe. So my advice if anybody ever intends to take 4 months to travel through Europe is to visit www.dutchcampervans.com and get one from there. Highly worth it.
After dropping off Lucy Emilie and I wandered through Utrecht. We bought a board game called De Beer is Los! (known as Tally Ho! in english.) Fun two player game if a little too random. We played it for most of the afternoon until dinner. I also managed to totally destroy Emilie almost every time :) For dinner we decided to return to the very first restaurant we had been at when we arrived 4 months earlier.The following day we took a train to Amsterdam. We dropped our bags off at the airport and then checked into our hostel. We decided we did not want to drag our two 25kg bags around town (Luckily no extra charges for the bags to fly home).
What followed is two days of debauchery in Amsterdam. Fortunately, none of the debauchery was undertaken by us. Amsterdam is a crazy city that really one has to experience for themselves to truly understand. Imagine a city with no limits on pretty much anything, legalized prostitution, coffee shops for smoking weed, sex stores on every second corner in the red light district, and some history to top it off. Very interesting city. I'll let Emilie fill in more if she wants to. (Tons of horny men walking around alone or in groups...Temptation land I suppose!) The second picture shows the red light district around 11am, not quite as busy as later in the day. For the ladies sake, i only took a side picture, you can see the individual windows where from a perpendicular angle you would be looking at mostly naked women...
Yesterday we flew home and officially marked the end of the trip. In the end it was a fantastic trip. Both Emilie and I grew both personally and as a couple. Four months in a van made us stronger in many ways. And for many, just the fact that we didn't kill each other for being cramped up in so little space is already surprising! I have come to several strong personal decisions including a choice to return to school which most who know me will find as a surprise. As for Emilie, the long needed break, 4 months of relaxing and no stress, was like heaven on earth. It had been a long time since we both had truly laughed and been happy. I have to say that in the end we regret nothing and had an amazing world class trip. I will finish with a saying.The best dreams are those that when realized give birth to more dreams.
Stay tuned for the next big trip. We will be back and I promise there will be more exciting posts. (And I will try not to bore everybody to tears with long climbing posts). Thanks for reading, your comments and e-mails kept us going and we truly enjoyed doing it.
Carpe Diem!
One last photo... David on our last day of climbing in Belgium...
