Amsterdam and Surroundings

127 miles, 23.9 mpg

We'd booked the Amsterdam to Newcastle ferry for our return so decided to spend our last few days at a campsite we'd used before for Amsterdam, just on the edge of the forest on the south side of the city. It's a decent site, open all year and with good cycle routes into the city or to the flower markets. It's also right on a little lake, which we pitched in front of:

Cycling through the forest into the city was great, although cycling in Amsterdam itself is fairly unpleasant surprisingly - mainly because they allow scooters/mopeds in many of the cycle lanes (and the moped users also use the cycle lanes they're not allowed in). The standard of their riding is also very poor, so Fiona found that irritating and a bit intimidating so we locked the bikes up near the Rijksmuseum and walked from there.

The Rijksmuseum was nice enough but very overpriced in comparison with pretty much everywhere else we've been (the equivalent in London for example would be the V&A - and not only is it much better it's also free), which was true of most of the Amsterdam attractions. Even this late in the year it was also only possible to book some of the attractions (Anne Frank's house and the Van Gogh museum) online - with no tickets being available for the same day. We've been to the excellent Anne Frank museum before fortunately, but had wanted to visit the Van Gogh - we'll be better prepared next time though! Instead we settled on having a nice walk about.