Day two

       Your attention please went the loud announcement in our room the speaker was right next to my bunk at head hight ! Oh well Time for breakfast move the clock forward an hour for Europe while cammy was first in the shower , I had booked the breakfast before we embarked it was ok but very busy , we watched the boat manouvering into the Dutch harbour it was very industrial wit loads of dockers and sailers loading various boats , there was some old island fortifications to look at , while we awaited our announcement to go to our car deck for disembarking  

       156mile the odometer read from polmont to the ferry we can't count the sea miles as we slept most of it , we got the sat nav set up while waiting to get off the boat and put in Sandra's address and off we drove into Europe first stop alkmaar Sandra's home city , we met Sandra 5 year ago on a ski holiday in soll Austria , I've kept in touch since but this is the first time we have seen each other in 5years ! She lives in a houseboat which worried me with the sat nav but we found our way there easy enough , Sandra made us coffee and gave us a tour of her boat house and we went for a pleasant walk into town , alkmaar is a lovely place we enjoyed our tour and stopped at a cafe where Sandra's son indi joined us , it was a very civilised first visit to a Dutch cafe for me and cammy ! The time was going way too quickly and me and cammy had a 7hr minimum drive to Berlin now , so we had to leave I hope Sandra enjoys her first haggis and her whisky liqueur gifts 

     We punched the address for our Berlin hotel into the sat nav and not for the first or last time that day were amazed and thankful for this amazing piece of modern navigation ,a sat nav is definitely the way forward ! As much as I love a map I wouldn't wish to go back to navigating into the unknown without sat nav now ,the sat nav says we would arrive at our destination at 19:40 and  I drove us the long pleasant flat roads all the way over the Dutch border into Germany for our first drive on the famous German autobahns ! With no speed limits I took the silver bullet to a UK license losing 115mph ! When we stopped at services for the toilet a coffee and snack cammy wanted to take over the driving from that point until Berlin city centre the silver bullet was rarely below 110 mph ! While cammy was loving the no speed limit autobahns I was turning into my mother ( watch your braking distance son we are not in a rush etc ) , the crazy thing is when we were doing 115-120mph cars came flying up behind us wanting past ! Occasionally a safety sign would pop up asking us to reduce our speed to 120km ! we were running low on fuel and had to stop after we had done 388miles , it was time to fill up €66.50 for a full tank €1,31a ltr for 50.4 ltr , we could prob bring that fuel bill down by a wee drop in the speed ! The sat nav was fantastic and directed us right to the door of the hotel I dread to think of the stress we would have had navigating there without it 

      It was 19:40 when we parked and we both were needing the loo we had been sitting a while ! So we asked the receptionist if we could use the loo while she booked us in , it was on the next floor we asked a bloke who was squatting in a corner where the loo was ? He said nien toileten ! The dirty swine was taking a shit in the corner because he couldn't find it we found it easily and had the unpleasant task of telling the girl at reception the good news ! 

      A swift shower and changed then a taxi ride over town to a bar called das gift ( it's German for poison ) this bar is owned by a Scottish man and his wife he plays in the band mogwai , we had a couple of beers there and some haggis nachos then left for a bar called the john muir , Mr john muir wouldn't have liked the atmosphere in this place , it was the smokiest bar I've been in ever !a low ceiling and lots of smokers , we got the addres of an Irish bar and left after one drink , cammy used his my taxi app and we were in our 3rd taxi the second last taxi of the night , at the Irish bar we got the wifi code the place was busy there was live music and the beer was cheep it was a good end to a good day