Well I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. First I was off down to the Isles of Scilly for a great week of diving in some gloriously sunny weather. I was lucky enough to get in 12 dives, a couple of very good wall dives, several on wrecks including the last to go down in 1997. Managed a great swim through underneath the bow of this ship. We even managed a couple of dives with

Last week I was out in Amsterdam with work but managed to take in a few of the sights and sounds and avoiding getting run down by a cyclist. I managed to take in the a canal boat tour and dinner, a visit to a windmill, Van Gogh museum which currently has on an exhbition of Caravaggio and Rembrant painting, the Rijksmuseum home to more painting by Rembrant indcluding the Nightwatch, Rembrant’s House, Anne Frank’s House, the Foam Gallery, Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography and De Oude Kerk which had on the World Press Photographer 2006 exhibition. On top of this I managed to wander round the city passing through the red light district.

Amsterdam is a very different city to other’s I have visited. It’s canal’s and flat terrain have created a very varied city with a compact centre that is small and easily crossed on foot and easily enough that people are willing to cycle rather than having to own a car. I can imagine that Amsterdam is a very difficult city to learn Dutch in as the Dutch speak English very well. I came across several conversations as I wandered around where a foreigner was speaking to someone Dutch in English.

Had a interesting time taking in my surroundings and was pleasently surprised to someone to explore a couple of the sights and sounds with. Strangely enough an Australian lass working near Munich on a placement as part of her studies.