We made our first move of the trip about 120 kilometers south to the college town of Tilburg. We are going to spend a few days in this area as our primary motivation is to visit the only Trappist Abby brewery outside of Belgium which is in Tilburg.
But because Easter is one of the major holidays in Europe we were nervous and pre-booked ourselves into a campground for the whole weekend. We have run into problems finding places to stay on Easter in Greece, Poland, and Spain so we didn’t want to take any chances. I thought I was booking us into a major campground, but it turns out to be a small but well appointed municipal aire. When we pulled up we were a little taken aback, as it is a single row of parking spaces that only holds about 10 RV’s wedged between a large apartment building and a very nice park.
The good news it is almost in the city center, and near the train station so we can use Tilburg as a base to go to a couple of near by towns. We may also take a day trip to Belgium to get cheaper Belgian fuel. The Netherlands has the highest fuel prices in Europe and the price has exploded since the Iran war. Today we saw fuel between €2.50 and 2.80 per liter, which is well north of $10 per gallon.
I am a bit afraid of the fuel prices once we make it to Norway and Sweden. On the positive side, we drive shorter distances and our van gets ~28 mpg which is FAR better than our US van Happy travels!
Hopefully things will stabilize and not get worst. We are glad our trip is relatively short this time also.