We trained to Munich on the 2nd of August. The Europe trip is coming to an end. We stayed in another hotel  Pension Locarno in the city centre (everything is expensive now) for two nights. We walked around some of the city on the night we arrived and looked at some of the old buildings before having dinner, huge meals way too much for us to eat. The next day we went to the Alter Botan.Garten which had a lovely fountain surrounded by flowers, the rest of the park was just grass and trees. We then spent a while looking around the Stradt-museum which displayed childrens fashion from years ago, Munichs history through the war, police stuff, photography, and puppets. In the afternoon we took a guided tour through the Dachau concentration camp just out of Munich, it was really worthwhile and although it has been overhauled and sterilized the guide did a good job of explaining the reality of the place back in the days when it was the concentration camp. Munich was a beautiful city, lots of shops underground along with trains, whole malls are down there. We didn't stay long enough to do the city justice.

Dusseldorf

We arrived here on the 4th of August. We booked into a hotel (in the red light district but close to the train station) and then walked around some of the high fashion shops along the river Rhine embankment promenade. We had dinner at an Ozie cafe, we wanted something familiar. Zoe enjoyed the banana juice. That night there was a huge storm lightening and thunder and all that, and it was still raining in the morning. We had planned to stay another day but when it rains there is not a lot you can do. We phoned our friends in Rotterdam and said we were coming a day early and jumped on the train and returned to Holland.

At the end of our tour of Europe

we finally returned to Holland

The weather was nice  here and we went shopping in the afternoon and went out to dinner with John and Susan in the evening. Yesterday we had a relaxing day, shopping for basics like nappies and for the rest of the day Lyndon processed the urgent and then the not so urgent of our 36 emails that had built up while we had been away. Today it has rained all day and we have been inside. I have been typing this thing all day and now I'm about to stop.

Rachel & Lyndon  

Sept 1st 1999