5/26/17 – Bernkastel-Kues

If there is any one thing I would suggest to anyone driving around Europe it is invest in a GPS. We bought our TomTom in Utrecht and it has been a godsend – except for Thursday. You may remember we named it Tomy but yesterday it was renamed Tammy or Theresa or TammyTheresa. At any rate we gave it a feminine moniker since a female voice gives us directions. (It took us three weeks to find the icon that indicates verbal instructions so now when we have to do something along our route – say go through a roundabout – TammyTheresa will actually tell us to enter the rotary and take the appropriate exit.)
She is also very able to decide we should go to a destination in a less direct route than we wanted.
If there is another thing I would suggest to anyone driving around Europe it is invest in good printed maps. You need backup in order to chart the course you really want.
Thursday we told TammyTheresa we wanted to go to Bernkastel-Kues by way of a scenic route. While you can pick “fastest” “shortest” “eco-friendly” and other route options, GPSs don’t have an option for “scenic route,” so you have to improvise.
TammyTheresa doesn’t take well to improvisation. A 200km (124 miles) drive starting around 10 am, wasn’t completed until 4:45pm. We were going to follow Hwy 258 almost the whole route. It was a decent size road on which we knew we’d make good time. At first we let TT have her way and followed her explicitly. Then, with less than 100 km to go and at an intersection clearly marking 258 straight ahead, she told us to turn – and we did. Now we were driving through villages whose streets were the width of alleyways in the US, and had cars parked on both sides. We had one mirror kiss. In between villages we followed lovely country lanes to we knew not where, because we hadn’t been using our printed maps and were having trouble finding ourselves on them.
TammyTheresa finally got us back to the 258 long enough for us to know where we were and we stayed on that road to the Mosel Valley despite her begging us over and over again to turn around and go back to a turnoff she knew we should take. “Turn left and make a U-turn at the first opportunity” Turn right and make a U-turn at the first opportunity”. If it hadn’t taken us 3 weeks to learn how to turn her on, we would have muted her.

We dropped into the Mosel Valley from above (literally) Cochem, one of the several fairy tale towns that dot the Mosel river. The Mosel Valley is famous for its vineyards and its Riesling wines. If you can, imagine a narrow valley, surely no wider than a mile from hilltop to hilltop, with a winding river at its base and steep hills reaching a height of 1400 ft above sea level, topped with forest. Vineyards grow from river to forest for the length of the valley – 128 km from Trier to Koblenz. The wine region is Germany’s third largest and quite possibly the most romantic.
From Cochem to Bernkastel-Kues we followed the Mosel river on the Moselstrasse the highway that flanks the river. Ascension is the holiday being celebrated this weekend and it is being honored everywhere we have been. The 43 km from Cochem to Bernkastel was packed with tourists and every one of the many campings along the river were filled to the brim. This did not bode well for our arrival at the camping in B-K and sure enough, when we finally threaded our way through the towns and past numerous vineyards we were told no room at the inn.
It must be understood that we had traveled from America all the way to Bernkastel-Kues in the Mosel Valley in Germany to stay at this particular camping. We were not going to take no for an answer.
Bruce – who was once told by the Queen of Hearts, that he could charm a bird out of a tree – set to work persuading the manager that we really must camp here. Need I say he succeeded? We were given a site for a full 4 days, despite other campers be turned away.
Seventeen years ago we stumbled upon this camping and spent a long weekend enjoying the yearly wine festival that included oom pah-pah bands, 17 hot air balloons launching and flying over our pitch, an army reserve group from Maine who called themselves the MAINEiacs (and posted their stickers all over town!), wine tasting of some of the best Rieslings I’ve ever had the pleasure to try; all in a fairytale town setting.
It is a delicious memory.

5/31/17 – Mosel to Luxembourg

We spent four days in Bernkastel-Kues, probably a day too long because we found Sunday to be a day of rest, an oddity in America but still respected in parts of Europe. That meant all that was open in town were restaurants and some memory shops – oh, and some wine shops too. We used Sunday to purchase a case (half case? 6-pack?) of Riesling wines that I will be loath to drink, wanting them to last.
Monday morning we prepared to leave; telling Tomy/Tammy/Theresa we wanted to go to an ACSI camping just outside Luxembourg City. No highways, no tolls please. Looking on the map it appeared to be a clear shot along the Moselstrasse to Trier and from there to our destination. The Moselstrasse, as the name implies, is a road along the Mosel river, so when T/T/T told us to turn off the Moselstrasse and smack into the middle of teeny tiny village with a one-lane wide road coming down a hill off a blind corner and a BUS careening (it seemed to us anyway) down it, that we rebelled.
We turned Willie around – with some difficulty: about a 6-point turn – and got back on the Moselstrasse. Meanwhile I was furiously pouring over the map trying to understand what happened. Of course, the rebellion turned out to be a mistake, but only in the sense that it extended our drive by about 8-10 km. T/T/T suggested we take the next available turn through a village with wider roads and no blind corners. But then we had to backtrack through some lush and lovely landscape until we reconnected with whatever road we should have been on in the first place.

We had our last glimpse of the Mosel quite like our first: from above, looking down at the peaceful winding river with a town at the bottom and vineyards reaching up to the tops of the valley hills. It is a beautiful area and one that brings joy to my heart.
With no incidents we found our camping Bon Accueil and by luck got the best pitch in the place for the weather we were experiencing: HOT. We were near the sanitaries (toilets/showers) and under shade trees. Monday it was almost 90F – very unusual, thankfully – and after a weekend baking in the sun on the Mosel, the shade was a huge blessing. Tuesday was to begin a cooling trend so we opted to go into the city then. In the meantime we did our laundry at a very reasonable price of 3€ a load. Laundry is unbelievably expensive in Europe. We have been paying 4.5-5€ a load and more if we want to dry, so 3€ was a bargain.
This camping is a stop over spot for campers returning home or beginning a trip so people come and go at a brisk pace. Our two night stay saw the campground fill up with Brits the first night and Netherlanders the second. Delightfully for us, both are countries who can understand us – sorta – we do speak American, not English.
So here is a funny thing: we are driving a camper with Netherlands license plates, we follow the rules of being low key (yea, yea I know, but really we are!) we dress in neutral colors and yet we are pegged pretty consistently as Americans or at least as campers. So much for going incognito. Fortunately the political baggage we could be carrying around with us is not affecting our interactions with people.

 

5/24/17 – Winterswijk, NL

Thursday we left Hoge Veluwe and made the drive to the Obelink store where we found the sought-after gas BBQ and all accessories to put it in working order. We also found a few other items we felt we couldn’t live without: a fly screen for the door, a washing pan for our dishes, an electric water kettle – that sort of thing. It was late afternoon by the time we left Obelink and we found a camping about 5 km away called het Weiskamp where we took a pitch for one night.
Bruce’ back has been causing him lots of pain since our arrival almost 3 weeks ago. It was progressively getting worse and we thought that perhaps Winterswijk, a smaller town, would be where we could find a chiropractor. The only problem was it was Friday and we would be unable to get an appointment until the following Monday. The hosts at the camping were gracious beyond belief, allowing us to extend our stay night after night as we realized Bruce’s pain was increasing daily.

I have to say a little bit about this camping: first and foremost it has private shower/toilet houses for each pitch. You cannot imagine what a treat it is to step out of your camper and 4 steps away is a shower and toilet there for your private use. If you have done any camping in your life at campgrounds (and you are not in a self contained 32’-43’ RV) you know what it is like to share a toilet and shower block with all the other campers – definitely doable but not much privacy. The camping is mostly rentable cabins (park models) with an area designated for caravans (trailers) and motorhomes (camper vans). It is a grassy site that is beautifully maintained. It is in a national landscape which offers plenty of walking and biking trails where you can commune with nature. We didn’t because Bruce had a busted back, but it was very restful just the same.

Monday, at 5:30pm, we got an appointment with a doctor who did wonders for Bruce but suggested – and we agreed – that he should take it easy for a while to let his back muscles unclench. So another night at Weiskamp and, what the hell, lets make it 2 nights. All together we spent 6 nights before we were confident that Bruce was well on the road to recovery.
Wednesday we finally got on the road with a target of Aachen, Germany where Charlemagne based his royal government in 800 AD. A cathedral, the Aachener Dom, was built by Charlemagne and he is buried there. It is exquisite and thank goodness we have seen it before because we won’t be seeing it this trip.
I have to interrupt the flow of the story here to relay a different train of thought.
As we have been working out our itinerary for this trip – pouring over maps, looking through travel books – we have realized we have seen a LOT of continental Europe during our past two trips. It is beginning to look like this will be a Greatest Hits trip. Along with new places: Croatia and Portugal specifically, we are going to revisit places our memories hold near and dear. Aachen was one but a holiday is happening this weekend – Ascension – and campsites are hard to find around the city. We were able to stay Wednesday night at Camping de Gastmolen in Vaals, NL but it was the only night available. Another camping in Aachen proper is in the “green zone” a low emission zone that our camper does not qualify to enter. It is probably full anyway.
Our real desire is to retrace our travels along the Mosel Valley stopping at Bernkastel-Kues a twin city famous for it Riesling wine (of which I hope to stock up on), so tomorrow we will forfeit our chance to see the exquisite cathedral of Charlemagne, perhaps catching it on our return from Croatia.
After almost a month we left the Netherlands Wednesday morning, driving all day through the countryside of Germany, only to spend the night back in the Netherlands Wednesday night, in the only available camping in the Aachen environs.

 

5/17/17 – Hoge Veluwe National Park, NL

Monday we left Gaasper Camping for the 35 kilometer drive to Utrecht. We (Bruce) are getting more and more comfortable with driving the camper – I don’t know if I said earlier but the transmission is a manual 5-gear on the column. We are completely comfortable with the “4-on-the-floor” transmissions or the old 3 gears on the column, but 5 forward gears on the column is taking some getting used to.
Anyhow, we got to the Texaco station, Donna’s pickup point, and while waiting for her we filled up the tank. We were pleasantly surprised to learn we are getting over 24mpg. That kind of mileage and the fact that Europe is far more compact than the U.S. will help us a lot in our travels. In fact, since we took Willie off premise and began the actual road trip we had cover 448km in 2 weeks; that, my friends is a whopping 278 miles. We’re covering a lot of ground.
Donna had her mechanic, Robert, install a door lock that we think will work to our satisfaction.
In our last rain storm we discovered a leak in the largest of our three skylights; Bruce and Robert devised a gasket to seal the leak. We hope it works.
Last tasks completed, we were off to the Hoge Veluwe National Park, a 5400 hectare (16,000 acres) former estate owned by the the Kroller-Muller family. They were a very wealthy couple in the early 1900s who purchased the land for a hunting grounds for him and a showcase for her art collection. Her collection of over 11,500 works was turned over to the nation in the 1920s and became the Kroller-Muller art museum, one of the most renowned museums in the Netherlands. Many famous paintings by many world-renowned artists are on display: Picasso, Seurat, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh are well represented. In fact, the Van Gogh collection is the second largest in the world with 90 paintings and more than 180 drawings.
We settled in at the Droom Park Hooge Veluwe, the same camping we discovered on our last trip in 2008. It is literally across the street from one of the entrances to the Park. Much to our dismay we found the campground being redeveloped as a stylish mobile home park (I’m sure they aren’t called that here and the homes are definitely not mobile) with the area left for actual camping confined to about 50 pitches which will be closed down this year. It is a real pity, this was one of the best campings we stayed in on our previous visit.

We opted to stay for three nights. Tuesday, a lovely day in the mid 70s, we spent projecting on the rig: we installed an indoor clothesline, a magnetic insect screen door (that died way quicker than it took to install, but I guess at 2.99 euros I was expecting way too much.) and rearranged the interior even more with the idea of using our space efficiently. We met our only neighbors, Ronald and Anita, on a week long holiday, from Breda. After dinner we sat and visited with them for a couple of hours. We made plans to play Rummycube – a game evidently known in the Netherlands as well as in the States – the next evening.
We’ve been pretty proud of ourselves for counting steps of 12,000-14,000 daily when we are touristing but we were shown up pretty strongly by these guys when they told us they rode their bikes to and from Arnhem, 30 kilometers away AND walked 17,000 steps in one day. These Dutch are so damn fit!!!

Wednesday we rode our bikes to the Kroller Muller museum. The day was going to be a scorcher at projected 82F. We prepared, dressing in very lightweight clothes, and bringing liquid refreshments along with our sandwiches. We opened the Map My Ride app on our iphones to track our ride and around 11am we commenced our ride. One way was about 14 km or over 8-1/2 miles and two thirds of the bike path was in the blazing sun. By the time we reached the museum, we were overheated, our thighs were killing us and we were pooped. (Please understand that, while we have excellent bicycles at home, it has been at least two years since we have done any riding). Getting off our bikes with pleasure, we took a few moments to catch our wind before entering the museum.
I love museums, museums and old churches. I love the history both represent – that window into a past that is no more.
The Kroller Muller has art dating from the 1500s to the modern era. The Impressionists, the Pointillists, the Van Gogh collection, all were happening right when Helene Muller was collecting and she has many famous paintings.
The museum also has a fabulous sculpture garden with amazing avant-garde pieces. Opened in 1962, it alone is 25 hectares (61 acres) with 160 works.
We took a couple of hours perusing the museum then prepared to ride home.
Oh god, we quickly found out we were not recovered from the first leg of the bike ride. Now we learned that we had definitely over extended ourselves as we pedaled ever more slowly, bodies screaming, to the park gates. Reminder to Bruce and Peg: for crying out loud, work up to longer bike rides slowly.
We begged off Rummycube with our new found friends, downed an ibuprofen and collapsed for a couple of hours before we started packing up for Thursday’s departure.
We are in the market for a portable gas barbecue so on our way to Aachen, Germany (we are actually leaving the Netherlands!) we will stop at Obelink, a giant camping store on the NL/DE border.
We think we have devised a plan of action for this trip. June 1 will find us on a ferry to the United Kingdom which we plan to tour as well as Ireland for most of the summer, about 3 months. Then we will return to the Continent and take 2 months crossing it to Croatia. After time spent there we will return to Mediterranean countries for the remainder of the trip. The UNESCO based trip became too difficult so we will mark them as we find them rather than specifically searching them out.
As happens with our travels, all itineraries are subject to change but this is the current plan.

 

5/14/2017 – Mother’s Day

Our weekend in Amsterdam was spent at the old standby camping – Gaasperplas. It must be our 4th stay at this camping, the convenience to Amsterdam can hardly be beat. A Metro stop is 100 meters from the entrance to the campground, which is on the grounds of a lovely park with a large lake that we never explored (until we got bikes) because we used the camping specifically to get into Amsterdam.
Our Amsterdam time was very brief this visit: only one day which we spent reacquainting ourselves with the city. We wandered around the inner city for about 5 hours, but having left our map at the camping, we did so without a specific plan. We got to the Dam – the most important square in the city and the original location of the damming of the Amstel river. (The city’s name – Amsterdam – is is the result of this dam). We saw the floating flower market which was selling a gazillion tulip bulbs and wooden tulips. We found Rembrandtplein, a square dedicated to the city’s homeboy, with bronze statues of all the characters in his masterpiece “The Night Watch.”

We walked the Red Light District and were surprised to see it was almost as busy during the day as it is at night.

We finally visited the famous flea market at Waterlooplein, only to find it commercialized in greater excess than we expected.
As always we were delighted by the amazing architecture of the buildings along the ever present canals. Property owners were taxed in previous centuries by how much land they covered. In order to beat the taxman they built up instead of out, resulting in tall narrow buildings with ornate gables. It was common to see dates on these building circa early 1700s.

We came across De Waag; the remaining weighing house, once a city gate and the oldest non-religious building remaining in Amsterdam. It was built in the 1500s.
Our favorite lunch in Europe is doner kebabs, often made of lambs meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie and served in a pita-type bread with lettuce, tomato and a killer white sauce that varies from shop to shop. Our first doner of the trip was in Delft and our second was in Amsterdam. We keep saying we must broaden our palettes but Damn! we enjoy those kebabs!
According to our Vivofit we walked over 14000 steps (that translated to 5+ miles) around the city. We returned home in the late afternoon, realizing we must make more time for Amsterdam later in the year. This day was all about rain and hiding from it, we’d prefer more clement weather.

Sunday we woke to sunny skies and knew we were going on a bike ride. We haven’t spoken much about the bike lanes in the Netherlands; They are as complete – and perhaps even more complete – than car roads. They are two-laned and even have their own traffic lights. There are also specific rules for riding which we are learning.
We had some grocery shopping to do so we decided to combine pleasure with necessity. First we rode all through Gaasparpark and around a lake large enough to accommodate several sail boats. Since we don’t read Dutch we worried we would get lost in a park large enough to get lost in. Eventually we found our way out and began our ride to the Action store, 2.5km away. From there the plans was to ride to a Lidl store – one of our very favorite grocery stores (think Grocery Outlet). The ride to the Action store took us an hour and several more kilometers than necessary to arrive. I’m saying we got lost, however we also got a good jump on developing our biking muscles. Because we were way behind schedule, and there was a grocery store by the Action store, and rain was threatening. we dropped the Lidl store run. Our return to the camping was a lot quicker, making us realize exactly how lost we got. We no sooner arrived home than the skies opened up with a horrendous downpour.
We spent the remaining daylight hours tinkering with Willie, making him more comfortable.
Tomorrow (Monday) we return to Utrecht to rebuild our exterior door lock. From there – who knows?

Kinderdijk

Our first attempt at purposefully visiting a UNESCO World Heritage sight ended in disappointment. South of Delft and outside of Rotterdam is the Kinderdijk Molen – 19 still working windmills that stand on a canal. Our plan was to park the van nearby, take the bikes and ride among the windmills taking photos to our hearts content. The reality was quite different. As large a tourist draw as this is, you’d think the area would have better parking for cars and campers. There was one parking area only and it’s camper van capacity was full. Ourselves and several other campers were turned away and left to our own devices. Now, if you know Bruce at all, you know he is pretty inventive and daring when it comes to stretching the rules. (He is NOT good at changing of itineraries, but that is a different subject.)
Since our first plan had been foiled, we (he – with my very reluctant agreement) began parking along the levies at precarious angles, hopping out for quick photo ops and back into the van searching for more photo ops.

The last opportunity was down a hillside behind a restaurant (this was my “reluctant agreement” – actually more like: “you’re not going down there, are you? Bruce!! You can’t go down there!!”) as he found a parking space. My beloved had the audacity to climb the back stairs of the restaurant in pursuit of the elusive “perfect” shot. By that time I was almost apoplectic and then, four more camper vans seeing us, swooped in and filled the lot. An employee came running out hollering “no, no, no!” as we left.
We have hopes of taking selfies with the UNESCO plaques to document our visits but this first try was a failure. At least we have the photos, although as you can see, they are nothing to brag about.
We are still battling the broken back door lock and decided to make the drive to Eindhoven 109km away, where a camping superstore – like the U.S. Camping World, but on steroids – was. We thought they might have a replacement lock we could install and finally make the van secure.

There is an interesting phenomenon about European driving we would like to share: according to conversion calculators 109km equals 68 miles. At home a drive of 68 miles on a State Hwy (ID-95, or CA-70) can be accomplished in 1hr15min at slightly less than 60mph.

I guess it’s no wonder the times are longer.

Back to our day.
We finally reached the camping store and were disappointed to learn they had no lock we could use. It was a huge store with a lot of tempting merchandise but just like Camping World, the prices were inflated. We did buy a book-type map of the Nederlands that we desperately needed. I told Bruce I was buying a map, I didn’t care if it cost 100 euros; fortunately it did not.

By now it was nearly 5pm and we had no idea what our next plan was or even where we were spending the night. We checked the ACSI camping book and found a site, Camping de Bocht, about 11km away. We arrived there at 5:50 (11 kilometers for crying out loud) It was lovely and had the amenities we had been enjoying. It began raining just as we got settled so we opened our awning set out our chairs and table and had pre-dinner hors d’ouvres that turned into dinner.
We contacted Donna with our disappointing news and made plans to return to Utrecht on Monday. In the meantime we decided to spend the weekend in Amsterdam