Boo-frggity-hoo, the trip is almost over!!

Big news! Our trip around the world has become a trip around Europe and it is suddenly almost over! Boo-Friggity-Hoo!! Cry me a river!!
The family that has been renting our house for the last 2 1/2 years suddenly decided to move out! Quite a shocker to us! They have been there for 2 1/2 years and planned to be there for at least 3. They are a really nice family and have taken great care of our house. It's simply a matter of circumstances that occurred that requires them to move away. It killed our trip, but we understand their decision and wish them the best. Another way to look at it is that they just saved us a whole bunch of money!!
We certainly can't travel around the world while still paying our mortgage, and we don't want to put a new renter in with a one year lease because we will need the place back sooner than that. Besides, we moved away almost 3 years ago and we are now getting excited to get our house back. Suddenly we are thinking about all of the improvements we could make to our house with the money we are spending on this trip.
We were a little bummed out at first, but we're not going to feel sorry for ourselves after almost 5 months of an amazing vacation! Plus we still have some cool stuff to do. We just arrived in (of all places) New Castle, England. We have another rail pass to use here and plan to travel all around England, Scotland, and Wales. It's like our vacation is almost over, but we still have a whole vacation to go!
I'll keep blogging until the trip is over. Not exactly sure when we are going home, probably in 2 to 3 weeks. I still need to figure out why my little Chromebook is getting so bogged down when processing pictures. So no pics just yet.
Gotta run, have some exploring to do!!!

Off to the U.K.!!

Man we have had such a great time in Amsterdam!! We could never leave!
We really made the most of our time here and we took the train to several different places.
While we were in Amsterdam we...
Day-tripped to Rotterdam - great time, saw a cool Asian-Indian band!
Day-tripped to Den Haag - very cool, went to the beach!
Day-tripped to Utrecht - neat place, cool old town with modern shopping.
Day-tripped to Arnhem (twice) - The Bomb!! National Park with free bicycles.
Day-tripped to Rijksmuseum - awesome museum! Lots of Rembrandt.
Day-tripped to Artis Zoo - Impressive little Zoo in the heart of Amsterdam

We also rented a car for a weekend and drove ALL over the Netherlands. We saw a lot of windmills and a lot of dykes. We had to park it at a train station outside of town though. Parking in Amsterdam is impossible.
One day we rented a scooter and followed the bike paths along the Amstel river. Driving the scooter in and out of Amsterdam was crazy, like a video game!
We also covered miles and miles of Amsterdam on foot. There is so much to see and there are so many nice city parks. The parks became one of our favorite things to do and we visited almost every one of them. There are always a lot of people relaxing, drinking wine and listening to music.

Tomorrow we head for England and we are going in style! It turned out that we would have to pay a 90 euro reservation charge to take the train to London, so we nixed that idea. Instead, we are taking an overnight cruise to New Castle, England. It is in Northern England, almost in Scotland. We booked our first night there and then we will back to vagabonding! Nothing better than waking up in the morning and having no idea where you are going to sleep that night.... paradise!!

Here is a BIG shout-out to our great friend Dave Scruggs! What an awesome guy! Thank you very much buddy, we really enjoyed our time at your place!

Here are some pics...
Oops, sorry, my little Chromebook did an automatic update this morning and now it is taking forever to process pictures!! Hopefully I can fix it later. I gave up on it after these three.

Cool sculpture in the park just down the street.

Funny, we haven't seen any squirrels or chipmunks, but plenty of bunnies!!

More Amsterdam Pics

Walking Amsterdam

Yup, that's what you think it is

This building looks like it could collapse in on itself. 

They sink because most of the city is built on mush.

Grass roof

We took a day trip to Holland's largest National Park.

These "White Bikes" are free, just pick one out and go.

The park had amazing terrain. From forest to dunes to near desert and swampland.

Teeny got her hair done by a gay Taiwanese guy here in Amsterdam and it looks awesome!

Teeny being goofy! 

The canals run pretty much on every city block, it's so cool!

Nice boathouse. There are tons of them.

Neat lizard statues

Canals are all over the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam.

In this neighborhood each house is on it's own little island.

We drove on roads like this for miles and miles. They follow along the sides of the canals.

Back to Amsterdam Pics

Canals are everywhere

This is a pay toilet

Vondel Park

You see some interesting cars over here

The view from our room

This is one of ten thousand pictures of a bird that Teeny has taken! 

Not to mention the twenty thousand pictures of plants!

This hippy dude was making amazing bubbles in the park.

I should have hung around to play the winner!!

Red Light district

Cute kid! Water shoots up randomly and this little guy was having a ball!

Who knew, there's a zoo! Right in Amsterdam too!!

Saw a lot of these on the train ride to Rotterdam

This was the information booth at the train station in Rotterdam. 

We've learned to go there first for free city maps.

Neat architecture in Rotterdam. The entire city was flattened by bombs during the war.

This statue is labeled as "controversial" and is known as "Butt Plug Santa"!!

This one was just weird

This is a floating hot tub with a wood stove to heat the water 

and an outboard motor to tool around with.

These are the famous "Cube Houses" in Rotterdam. Some architect dude was commissioned to build a bridge over a canal and this is what he came up with. The houses are cubes that are turned up on one corner like a diamond. We toured one of them. Very odd and a huge waste of space. They sell now for two hundred thousand euro.