We spent a week in a campground near Breda in The Netherlands. Although the Dutch don't use ice as prodigiously as we Americans, when we inquired about buying ice in a supermarket, an assistant manager volunteered to freeze a bucket of water daily for us for free to keep us supplied! So every day we made our trip to the market for essentials, handed him an empty plastic bucket and picked up our new block of ice for our camp trailer icebox. He refused to accept money for his service! Everyone we met in the campground went out of their way to be friendly and helpful to us. The only downside: rain. But that's universal here in Europe, isn't it? Our first trip to the North Sea beach was a bit of a shocker to my wife and sons as Europeans broadly consider swimsuits optional on Dutch beaches. Ahem -- yes, well, indeed! I recommend The Netherlands as a stand-out destination for wonderful people, good food, and memorable experiences.

We just recently returned from a trip to Norway and the Geiranger Fjord. The trip was outstanding, and we were fortunate enough to have good weather for most of the trip. For those that don't know, Geiranger Fjord is one of the World UNESCO sites selected for it's beauty.

We stayed in a cabin in order to save some money. Everything in Norway is rather expensive. The location was right on the water, and just lovely. Of course there is shopping to be done, and we did just a bit of it. We also went to the Norwegian Fjordcenter to see the history of the fjords. We also took a boat tour on the fjord to see the sights. It was amazing to see waterfalls that fall for hundreds of meters.

For those interested, I've posted pictures that we took. I'm not the worlds best photographer, so the pictures are mainly for my family and friends. They are located at http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike/geiranger and http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike/geiranger2 . Enjoy.

Mike

My husband, son, and I took a military hop from an AFB here in the US to a base in England. My son was born in England when we were stationed there. The base that we were stationed at is closed. We stayed at a different base. The plane landed on the base. We stayed in billeting (TLF) and ate in the food court. We couldn't buy at the BX or Commissary because we did not have ration cards. We bought some food at British stores and cooked it in our billeting unit. We rented a car, which was surprisingly cheap. Took buses, trains, and taxis the rest of the time, after we turned in the rental car. We visited old haunts, and looked up some British people that we had known. We didn't have much luck getting a hop back and had to take a taxi to Heathrow Airport and buy commercial tickets home. Oh, well. What a wonderful trip.