Yesterday morning I ran into a little local flea market in Forbach (where I stayed overnight) on my way to Wiesbaden. Bought a large box of strawberries for a buck to eat on the trip. I took the supposedly short drive to Wiesbaden (actually spent about 4 hours getting there) as I was about 15 miles out of Wiesbaden I saw my first grape vines. For all of the wine made in France and Germany I drove thru half of France and a quarter of Germany before I saw my first grapes. After checking into the hotel and giving them the story about my still missing luggage I took off for the Wiesbaden antique stores. The address of the one I picked drove my GPS nuts. It tried to take me thru a parking lot, dead end street, etc. and kept driving me around in circles. I knew I was close but decided to park the car and walk to the store. Of course in a foreign land with no map except a general map of the area printed to tell me where the antiques stores are I was nervous about leaving the car. Remember one wrong turn and I owe Hertz $20K or so for the missing car. Went to several stores but did not find anything. I did leave a few cards so you never know what will turn up.

It was late afternoon so I decided to hit the casinos. The original plan was to go to Bad Homburg first since it was the farthest away. But I was already in Wiesbaden so why not go there first? Good decision - turns out I was less than a mile away. They even let me in without a suitcoat (I did have on my new "casino shoes" I managed to buy a set of chips $5 and down but of course I forgot my chip scan to tell me which chips I already had. Of course I have both of them. The went to Bad Homburg and got chips there and lastly went to Casino Maintz. I needed to go there last because it is on the other side of the river and they are doing major construction on the roads and bridges. They even have signs saying you vehicle has to fit in 2.2 meter width (that is about 7 feet!). At the last place they made me rent the suitcoat for $1.50. But they had 5 different 2 Euro roulette chips and three 5 euro chips. On arrival back at the room - miracles happen. My luggage was there finally. Six days with no luggage.

I left this morning early and took the river route up the Rhein from Wiesbaden to Bonn and then the freeway to Amsterdam. Saw some old castles and went thru a few of the small towns there. Not as exciting as I hoped but still turned into a nice relaxing day considering I drove for 9 hours. I was going so slow I would even pull off of the road to let people pass me.

Made it to Amsterdam and looking forward to a quiet nite and a nice dinner. My hotel is 5 or 10 miles from the center of Amsterdam so it will be a 15 minute drive in to the Waterlooplien flea market tomorrow. Gotta make a fast day of it - they charge $4 per hour for parking. Still trying to figure out if I should take the train or not. Have to walk half a mile to get there plus trying to switch trains to get to the flea market.Train or car - tough decision!