Hopscotch with a dog

Todays total is 76km to Neuss (Hotel Kolossos). Not as far as yesterday as one of my knees was getting rather sore. We cycled through the heavily industrialized Rhur area, but most of the time through tree lined avenues along the river. Occasionally the route went more inland to avoid industrial area that were right up to the river. One such area was the Ford factory, which covers an area bigger than a mid-sized NZ town, so bigger than Marton, but smaller than Wanganui.


The bits that weren't covered with sunblock are now rather red, so the weather is still nice to us. We saw another cycling family today, 4 or 5 kids on bikes, dad towing a trailer with a dog lolling happily inside it, Mum had another trailer full of stuff and a kid on the back. We played hopscotch with them for most of the day.


First in the impressive continental breakfast layout is now the Best Western Hotel we stayed at last night, forget three of each type of food, try 6 instead. Portion sizes are something we are having a few issues with. Most of the meals we've ordered so far are about twice as big as we normally would eat. Tonights butterfly pork meal with bacon fried potatoes came on a plate the size of a serving platter. The side salad filled a normal sized plate. We did our best to eat most of it because it was very nice. At McDonald's yesterday George's burger was about twice the size of what you get in New Zealand. We're not going to get trim at this rate.


The restaurant tonight was right beside the Rhein and we happily watched all the big boats and barges plying up and down the river. We still haven't figured out what navigation rules are in play, boats don't always pass to starboard and most boats seem to have a big flashing light mounted on the cockpit. Tried looking it up on the internet, but nothing obvious appered, must be using the wrong key words.



Oh well, I'll go and rub some more moisturiser on the sunburn and go to bed. Nuess is not very exiting, being a suburban commuting area. The architecture is modern close build stuff and there is no shopping centre nearby. The restaurant by the Rhein was probably the most interestng thing we came across. Tomorrow we should hopefully make it in to Nederland.