For our third day in
Holland we decided to go to Delft, which is where they famously make all of the
blue painted pottery and where the book "Girl with a Pearl Earring"
is set. Again we had a stormy day, but
we never got rained on except while we were driving. Since it was Saturday, we lucked out and
discovered it was market day in Delft.
The entire town square was taken up by a textiles market, and all of the
side streets were also full of various vendors selling anything from food to
antiques. As per usual, Ryan and I just
enjoyed wandering around and enjoyed the interesting scenery.
One food that is
very Dutch is the stroopwafel. As you
can see in the picture, they're two thin, soft cookies, stuck together with
syrup. Usually they just sell the small
ones, but we found a street vendor making massive, fresh, warm ones. Soooo yummy!
For lunch we stopped
at one of the cafes surrounding the market and had a traditional Dutch meal of
croquettes (deep fried balls of mashed up and spiced meat) and a cheese and
salami platter. Luckily the sun came out
just long enough for us to sit outside and enjoy the atmosphere.
Next we headed just
down the road to Den Haag, where we visited Madurodam (which I think just means
something like "miniature village").
I had been there when I visited Holland as a kid, but we thought it would
be a fun place to visit again. It has
all sorts of famous buildings from all over Holland, but of course they are
miniature. There was also a bunch of
interactive games, movies, and questions, but it was really hard to get a turn
because there were so many kids everywhere.
One of the games was to load a ship in the water with a bunch of cargo
blocks. You had to load it evenly, or
the ship would tip over. I decided to
race this little Dutch girl, but when we got to the end she was missing a block
(so I won, muah ha ha!) I tried to help
her and found that the missing block was actually lodged under her ship, but
when I tried to get it out, I tipped over her ship. Of course she couldn't understand my English
(I doubt she even knew we were racing), but she just gave me the most
devastated look so Ryan and I ran away.
Seriously, kids do not like me!
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| The tulip fields. |
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| Ryan at a mini-rave. I love the persspective on this, since that stage is actually only a few feet away, and evenly level with the ledge Ryan is on. |
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| The Alkmaar Cheese Market that we were hoping to see when we went to Alkmaar. |
After a fun but
exhausting day, we went back to Hilversum and went through more old pictures
with my Aunt Els. She worked on a cruise
ship when she was young, so she had lots of interesting stories to share from
her travels all over the world. It was
also neat to see pictures of my grandparents (her brother) when they had just
come to Canada to settle on a farm, and hear stories of how my grandparents
met.
The next day,
Sunday, we finally headed to Amsterdam.
Unfortunately, we had quite a few problems with the transportation that
day. We walked to the train station, but
found out that the ticket machines don't take bills or credit cards. Since we didn't have enough money in coins,
we had to head back to Els's house and got her to pay for our tickets with her
debit card. When we eventually got
there, we had a wonderful day.
First we just
wandered around one of the quieter neighbourhoods that isn't a touristy part of
Amsterdam. It was nice to see abandoned
streets and kids playing in the parks on a Sunday morning, and just take in the
serenity of the city.
After that, though,
we headed back to the main part of Amsterdam to walk through the hustle and
bustle of the touristy areas. We found a
neat little restaurant for lunch, and enjoyed a short rest from all of our walking. There isn't much to tell about our morning,
since it was really nice but also uneventful.
Canals, old buildings, bicycles...you know, the usual.
Upon Ryan's request,
that afternoon we did a tour of the Heineken brewery. Surprisingly, it was really fun and highly
interactive so I really enjoyed it too.
After walking around
the stuff you would expect to see (history of Heineken, the giant vats and
kegs, the brewing process, etc.) we did "the Heineken experience",
which was hilarious. They corralled a
group of us into a small room, and made us stand on a platform facing a movie
screen, holding on to some brace bars.
Then they played a video of the brewing process, where we were supposed
to be the beer. The platform jiggled
around, they sprayed us with water, and warmed us with heat lamps. After that, they sent us into this bar room
where we learned "how to drink a Heineken". The guide asked a bunch of questions, and
when I yelled out the answer to the first one, I got a free beer! I let someone else answer the second one, but
when no one got the third answer I yelled it out and won another beer!
To end off the tour,
we could have had 2 free beers, or we could get lessons on how to pour the
perfect Heineken. Since I had already
had way too much to drink, we did the lessons.
Ryan was absolutely convinced that he could pour a better beer than me,
so he made me go first. I immediately
messed up, but quickly recovered and then poured 2 perfect beers. Of course then he tried, but he didn't quite
have the mad beer pouring skills that I have (from years of practice at my
dad's brew your own beer store).
By the time we
finished our beers, it was getting late and we had to get back to Hilversum for
dinner reservations with Els. We walked
the "scenic" way to the train station through the Red Light District
and some other sleezy areas, and finally made it to the train. We quickly checked the board, then went to
the platform and waited for the train.
Stupidly, we never double checked the train details, and we ended up
getting on a direct train to a town past Hilversum. We ended up way to far away, and then we got
confused about which train to take back home.
If we had been slightly quicker we would have caught it back
immediately, but we hesitated too much and missed it by about one minute. Late for dinner, with no way to contact my
aunt, we waited it out and showed up very late.
She had just started to worry, but everything worked out fine. In the end we still got into the restaurant,
and had an amazing dinner at a really nice fancy meal in Hilversum. It was a wonderful way to end a great day,
and an awesome trip to Holland.
The next day we
didn't do much of anything, except drink tea and look at old pictures. In the early afternoon we headed off to the
airport to start the final bit of our journey around the world - a relaxing
vacation in Thailand!
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