With all of our travels, we have had the chance to catch up with lots of friends in different countries but now that we are heading into The Netherlands, it is time to see some family.

As many of you know, Nick’s parents were born in The Netherlands and emigrated to Australia after they got married, so Nick and the rest of his sister and brothers were born in Oz. And most of his aunts, uncles, cousins, etc live in Europe. But we are only here for a short time so won’t get to see everyone, just a couple of cousins.

Our first port of call was Zwolle, or more particularly Hattem, which is across the river (and provincial border) from Zwolle. At the suggestion of Patricia, we stayed at the Marina which was part of the old canal system in that area. And Hattem is a lovely little old town with the National Dutch Bread Museum, and lots of lovely old buildings.

We met Patricia (a cousin), Tijs, her husband, and Marlene (another cousin) for coffee and then lunch. We haven’t seen Patricia & Tijs for about 8 years, in fact, we didn’t recognise Marlene as she was about 9 years old the last time we saw her! And then, in the evening, we met again for dinner, but with another of the previously small cousins, Dorien, who has also grown up and now works as a dog trainer. I did my best to try and convince her to come to Australia and she could get plenty of work – and that’s just with Tyson & Brittni’s dog, Odin!!

We had arranged to stay in Hattem for a couple of days because Patricia had told us that the weekend was something called “Open Monumentendag”, which takes place on the second weekend of September. This allows lots of monuments to open their doors for free and encourages the public to get and see their history and heritage. Anyway, we spent a lovely day exploring the environs of Hattem, walking along bicycle paths (my gosh, that was dangerous!), cross some lovely old bridges and exploring Hattem, which was another new place that we added to our list of Dutch towns.

Oh, and I just want to say how lovely the Jachthaven at a Hattem was! Washing machine and dryer being on hand gave us an chance to catch up with the all-important washing, other Motorhomes with dogs that we could pat and generally a really lovely outlook, and not expensive! We can thoroughly recommend it to future travellers!

Sunday morning found us on the road again, heading north towards Groningen, so that we could spend some time with more cousins, but this time from the other branch of Nick’s family. Back in 2013, when we drove across Russia & Mongolia, it was ostensibly to attend the wedding of Nick’s niece, in Appingedam. Now, 11 years later, they have a darling little girl and have moved into their forever home.

We spent a lovely couple of hours catching up with the whole family, with eating and drinking and lots of talking and laughing thrown in!!

After visiting family that we already knew well, it was time to drive almost to the other end of the country. We drove down to Rotterdam for 2 reasons – we had never been there before and it was close to Den Haag, where we would meet yet another cousin!  We stayed at the Rotterdam Stad Kamping which was close to public transport and convenient for both Rotterdam and Den Haag. We spent a great day walking around Rotterdam and visited a really interesting museum called “40-45” which tells the story of Rotterdam during the War. We also found the Pilgrim Fathers’ Church. Hands up if you have always thought that the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth. They did, but… apparently they left from Rotterdam first and the ship they were in was unseaworthy and so they detoured via Plymouth and then sailed to North America in the Mayflower. 

Earlier in our trip, we had visited some of Nick’s cousins in Aruba. Now it was time to meet the fourth of five cousins in this family group. Paola and her eldest son came to meet us and we spent a lovely couple of hours getting to know each other.

Now it was time to head back towards Germany as we only have about 8 or 9 days before we have to return the Motorhome. We had planned to stop in Arnhem so MJ could do a bit of Geocaching and when we arrived there, we discovered that it was the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and that were going to be lots of memorial events over the weekend. This did make finding accommodation a bit tricky but we eventually found a campsite south of Nijmegen which turned out to be an absolute gem! The owner turned up with a plug-in mosquito zapper for us to use as, in her words, the mozzies were bad.

The next day, we crossed the border into Germany and we were aiming Aachen with the hope that we could spend a few hours at the Spa. However, Aachen is not Motorhome friendly and we found it extremely difficult to find somewhere to park. Everywhere that we found that had the space, were very specific about “No Motorhomes”. So we ditched that plan and moved onto Köln.

We hadn’t been there before but had been close, back in 2013 when we visited a Uni friend of MJ’s who used to live & work in Mönchengladbach.  And again in Köln, we struggled to find a campsite! We visited the Stadtcamping, where MJ had made a booking but because the required deposit had not been paid, they said that there was no booking. We tried to explain that the website wouldn’t let us but they weren’t interested. So we drove across the river, in peak hour which wasn’t fun, and went to the next closest campground. Again, they explained that they were full but, they took the time to walk us around and managed to find a spot for us! Wow! Such a difference in attitude!!

So now we are in Köln for a couple of nights and we spent a day exploring the city. There were lots of visitors (mainly loud soccer fans) in the town and after 5 months of lots of walking, we decided that we wanted to do some easy sightseeing, so we booked a sightseeing cruise on the Rhine. It was lovely and relaxing going down and back up the river and seeing some of the amazing architecture. Though they might need to think about how difficult it is to hear the commentary when there were so many people on the cruise. And all talking!

When we visiting Tobi & Christine, we were told about the cold-water Geyser which is on the Rhine. It turns that it is at a place called Andernach. There is a very popular Stellplatz there and we were lucky enough to to get a spot, though it looks like some people stay there for more than a couple of days and they hog the spots along the Rhine. But that didn’t worry us as we went wandering off for a walk along the Rhine. And after coming all this way, we didn’t get to see the Geyser as, apparently, the only way you can see it was to visit the Geyser Information Centre, sit through a geology lesson about how and why the geyser is there and then go on a short boat ride to see the geyser. And all for the princely sum of 20€ – each!

Now we are down to 2 nights left in the Motorhome and our friends (Rosie & Torsten) invited us to stay with them while we unpacked and then cleaned the WoMo. We had fun catching up on all that we had done and giving Benny lots of cuddles. In case you’ve forgotten, Benny is a beautiful black Labrador.

One night in Saarlouis which is quite a pretty town, returned the WoMo – “oh the cupboards aren’t clean, we will have to get our cleaning crew in.” It turns out that there was a piece of onion skin in the cupboard!! Anyway, the WoMo is now gone. I will say that it was convenient as it was our transport and our accommodation, but we really missed having e-bikes which would have made exploring towns a lot easier. But we did have some issues on what was not supplied for a long-term rental.

Anyway, we caught a train to Saarbrücken and spent our last night in Germany there and on Thursday morning, we were on a train, heading to Paris.

Nick & I have both been to Paris twice, but not always together. Nick’s first trip was in 1977 and was apparently quite traumatic. So much so that he has turned into a Franco-phobe. We were there together in 2000 and MJ returned for a weekend in 2008.

For this trip, we were staying in an AirBnB in Montmartre which was described as “tiny” and it was! But it was just around the corner (and down the hill) from Sacre-Cœur and travel on the Funicular is included in your Navigo Card. So, obviously we made use of the Funicular but on Day 2 in Paris, MJ walked all the way up the stairs to get to the terrace in front of Sacre-Cœur.

We also went to see if the repairs to Notre Dame had been finished and was open yet, but sadly they weren’t. They had hoped that it would be open in time for the Olympics but now they are saying Christmas – we will see!

One item that had been on MJ’s wish list for a long time, was a visit to Cimetiere de Père Lachaise. So on Saturday morning, we made an early start (by Parisian standards) and went to the cemetery and proceeded to clock up 8000 steps looking at old grave stones. And then to recover all those lost calories, we had lunch in a brasserie across the road – Nick finally got to have his Moules frites!

In the afternoon, we visited the Pantheon, which was built, or at least started, before the Revolution and was supposed to be a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve who is the Patron Saint of Paris, but after the revolution, the purpose was changed and it was decided to make it an honorable burial place for famous French people. And you can only be interred there by an Parliamentary Decree (the French version). People like Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, Josephine Baker, Voltaire and Rousseau are just some of the people who have been interred there.

Two things I learnt at the Pantheon that I thought were amusing – when the coffin of Alexandre Dumas was going to be interred in the Pantheon, on the way, it was presented at the Chateau de Monte Cristo. And when Victor Hugo was going to be interred, the Pantheon was removed from the control of the church before his body could be interred there. Whilst Victor Hugo started as a Catholic, he eventually became extremely Anti-Catholic. So much so that, when his sons died, he insisted that they were buried without a crucifix or a priest. And he made the same stipulation in his Will about his own funeral.

And only the French could have a word that refers to the act of being interred in the Pantheon – pantheonisation!

As always, the Paris Metro was an extremely convenient way to travel but… why are there always stairs to negotiate your way from one line to another. At some stations, we were happy to see escalators and even a couple of elevators. But when you are trying to negotiate luggage for a long trip, then the stairs are an absolute nightmare! And the Navigo Easy card is just that – easy to get and easy to use!

It is now 11:18am, Sunday 29 Sept and we are sitting on the Eurostar heading back to London, just so we can catch another train to Heathrow and head to our next Continent. We have been in Europe for 12 weeks and we have been on the road for 5 months, 2 days. We are looking forward to the next couple of weeks but we are also looking forward to getting home.