#vanlife

We went for a little explore. There is a cool park just nearby with interesting scupltures, kids play activities, great trees and interesting landscaping.

We've arrived at a camper park about 12km outside Amsterdam. It's clean and well maintained, but a bit souless. I suppose that's what is actually useful here - it's a place to put one's van when visiting Amsterdam rather than an idyllic wilderness retreat. In the evening, we got the Metro into Amsterdam and wandered around looking at the city together. Our energy levels were low, so it wasn't a huge expedition, and after a bit of walking around, we found a really wonderful Italian restaurant called Santi & Santini (https://www.santiesantini.com). It was a 4.8 on google reviews and it was well deserved. We both had the Orecchiette al sugo di carne (Orecchiette, beef stew slow cooked for 8 hours in tomato sauce, pecorino cheese, celery, carrots, onion, laurer, red wine) - and it was really awesome comfort food - just what we both needed. Then, because it was late and we were tired, we treated ourselves to an Uber back to Ripley.

+2

Disaster! We've spent the day cleaning every inch of Ripley, repacked every crate and stowed the garage neatly... We were leaving for the Ferry, just a couple of minutes late, but nothing bad. I pulled out of the driveway and, out of habit, turned as though I was in my car and not a 6.5m van. I swung into the gate post and heard a sickening crunch. The door is badly damaged and will almost certainly need replacing and repainting. So that's £2000 gone. On the plus side - new paint.