Day 2: Metz – Brussels – Amsterdam

This morning we got spoiled! We ate fresh baguettes, croissants, cheese, jam, and fresh coffee before heading on our long drive to Amsterdam. We got the car all packed, and ready to go an hour ahead of schedule, to find to our dismay that the car wouldn’t start. So we went back inside and Fabienne called their good friend Claude, who happens to be a great mechanic, to come and take a look at the car in exchange for lunch. Claude decided the car needed a new battery, and generously offered to go change it for us and come back. Once he came back, we said our goodbyes and Fabienne sent us on our way with a bottle of French wine, a jar of violet jam, a chocolate bar, sparkling water, organic apple juice, a bag of croissants, and a baguette. She was truly an angel. We were finally on our way now half an hour behind schedule. We figured we would easily make it up on the road. Oh were we so wrong. 

The beginning of our road trip was fairly smooth. We were almost half way to Amsterdam and had been driving for 3 hours with no complications so far. We were on the freeway in Brussels, Belgium when one road block turned into a 2 hour delay. Our GPS system, or TomTom, did not know that there was a new bridge being built in Brussels, and Riel and I had not figured out that there was a button called “Find Alternative Route” on the TomTom that would recalculate a new route for us, so we got lost and kept driving around in circles until we found a gas station. Now this is a different story all together. We figured this would be a good opportunity to fill up since we were at a quarter tank of gas. Easy enough, right? Wrong. We couldn’t find the gas tank opener for the life of us. We searched everywhere!! Trust me, if you were there you probably would have had the same problem. We concluded, there must be something different about European cars that we don’t know about. So after a good 15 minutes of searching we started to ask people. No one seemed to know. At one point we had two men looking up and down and around the car for the release button, but no luck. Finally, I found the car manual! Bingo! Wrong again. It was in German. But luckily, we found an Englishman who happened to live in Brussels, and could read German. Go figure. So here is a tip for anyone that ever gets stuck in our predicament: You must place the key in the drivers keyhole and unlock all the doors at once since they are all connected to a central locking system, then the gas tank will open! Voila!

Okay, so now we have gas, and Riel has figured out there is a “Find Alternative Route” button on the GPS and we were well on our merry way to Amsterdam almost 2 hours behind schedule. We get to our first destination at 8:00pm. At first it looked kind of sketchy, but once you got on the campground it wasn’t all that bad. Yes, we were about to camp in Amsterdam. We found some of the riders, who will be cycling across Europe to raise money for micro-credit, which are small trust based loans that are given to impoverished entrepreneurs in third world countries, and whom we will be following and filming for the next three and a half weeks. 

Setting up our tent was quite the adventure. Everyone was really amused at how our tent just popped up without having to put it together. You just take it out of the bag, pop it up, and peg it down. As easy as 1-2-3…maybe that’s why it’s called EZ-TENT lol. Once we got our tent set-up, we headed to have dinner at the camp restaurant: Veggie burgers, fries, and Heineken it was!