When we got up it was raining and it rained most of the journey to
Mesnil le Blanc where we were staying in the Campanile. If it hadn’t
been raining we would have taken out on foot to try to find somewhere
nice to eat. However we had to make do with the onsite restaurant
which had a starter and cheese and dessert buffet. We went for the
duo missing out on the main course. It was ok.
Our trip to Gouda was horrendous in awful rain with very poor
visibility and an awful lot of traffic. The journey should have taken
less than 5 hours but it took 8 - some of that was in the services
for coffee and for lunch. When we arrived here we were horrified by
how hard it was to get parking. I tried to direct Jim into a place
and nearly fell into the canal! Anyway we finally got parked and the car
emptied in awful rain.
The stairs are so steep here we couldn’t
bring the big case up. Fortunately there is a good bit of room under
the stairs so we put it there. I took quite a while speculating on how I would ascend and descend this staircase that I can only describe as a perverted ship-staircase because to add difficulty to difficulty Dutch architects throw in a curve!. My first venture upwards was on all fours Once above I contemplated the descent. Would I reverse down or would I bum bump my way down? I gingerly took one step at a time holding on for dear life. They are seriously dangerous stairs for me! I didn't know wheter to laugh or cry when I discovered that staircase is trap in Dutch - yes a death trap!
I found this in a book in the house!
I had an added concern based on the narrowness of the little corridor to the bathroom and its proximity to the top of the stairs. I worried that if Jim goes out to the loo during the night he could easily fall down because he does a lot of blundering about.
Cilia left us some smoked ham and a huge chunk of Gouda as well as the Gouda specialty Stroopwafel so we were well fed. We were glad to be able to watch a channel on tv that had English - BBC1 and BBC2.
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