Day 19: Last Day in Europe

My last day in Europe.  Spent relaxing out on a beach.  Couldn’t get much better than this.  The temperature outside is perfect.  The breeze from the ocean is great.  And no rain clouds in sight.  Woke up today around 8 and then headed downstairs for the breakfast buffet.  I was too lazy to shower before eating so I went down in my PJs.  But, it’s okay.

So, last night I checked my flight times.  And wow, do I fail at planning.  I found out my flight is for 10:45AM and the earliest check out time here is 8AM.  Luckily, during breakfast I explained my situation to the owner and he was kind of enough to let me pay this morning and then told me to leave the key in my room.  Now I can leave as early as I want.  There’s a train that comes around 7:20AM that goes to Amsterdam Central then I transfer trains to go to Schiphol Airport.  Should make it to the airport by 8:10AM.  Gives me enough time to check-in and have some breakfast.  As a random tip for booking train rides around Europe, use http://www.raileurope.ca.  Just pick a date, time, and destination, and it’ll give you all possible routes you can take to get to said destination.  Makes it much easier than going to each country’s individual train transit website.  The prices on the site are fairly close to what you’d get at the station.  You don’t have to buy your tickets early.  The prices never fluctuate if you’re taking IC or ICE trains.

DSC00765.jpg Anyway, today I’ll be just relaxing at the beach again.  For lunch I got a chicken burger with satay sauce.  Also, bought some cherries from the local grocery store Dirk.  Very yum.  I walked around a bit today.  Wanted to show this to you guys.  The beach here is really cool how it works.  Its divided up into sections by which company or restaurant sponsors the area.  So I took a shot of three.  A red one, blue one, and white one.  Each section is run by individual stores or at least it seems that way.  But still, pretty cool.  The facilities are really nice.  Like there’s showers and washrooms nearby that are fairly clean.  They even provide sun tents and chairs on the beach.  You really don’t have to bring much with you when you go.  Perhaps only bring a towel, but even those can be bought at the stores nearby.  And there’s a gazillion flat bed like chairs too (forgot the name).  Bottom line this place is mad chills.

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If you like beaches, biking, drinking beer, eating fries, or a combination, then Zandvoort is for you.  There’s a lot of local and privately owned hotels in the area.  I think I got lucky with the one I picked.  Cause some of the other ones look pretty dingy.  Oh, another really popular thing to do here too is driving Ferraris! For 50€ you can drive a Ferrari on a track in the area.  I didn’t get my international licence so I can’t do it today.  I definitely have to remember to do that next time.

For dinner I ended up eating a pizza with tuna, onions, mushrooms, and a lot of cheese.  Then grabbed some fries from Febo a fast food chain in the Netherlands.  I better start packing soon.  I’ll probably work on writing some more articles later.  Like those tips pages I promised and my overall feel for each city I visited during this part of the voyage.  Probably work on them while on my 11 hour flight to Hong Kong.

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Day 18: Beach on Zandvoort

All right, I have a confession.  I lied.  I didn’t go to Amsterdam.  Actually I failed at planning a trip to Amsterdam.  I somehow booked a hotel for Zandvoort and didn’t check until the day I had to leave Groningen.  Actually, I booked it on Kayak.com and I just picked anywhere close to Schiphol.  It said 10 km so I didn’t think it was that far from Amsterdam Central.

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But, whatever! I’m here and honestly this place is amazing!  There’s beaches (tons of them), lots of food, places to rent bikes and segways!  And the best part of this trip, my hotel room.  The hotel room is SO nice.  Probably the best place I’ve stayed at my entire trip thus far.  It’s super clean, looks like it was just renovated.

Shotel Ate another dish of shawarma and fries and then for dinner I had fries with satay sauce and a dutch cheese pocket. Super healthy, right? After that, headed to the local grocery store and grabbed a 1.5 litre bottle of water and then headed home.

Waited around until 9:45pm so that I could go out just before sunset.  Got a few shots of sunset and even using one as my background now.  If you want a full resolution version let me know.  I’m really liking these ones.

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