World Traveler

I saved my whole life to go to Europe!  The original plan was to give ourselves a self-guided tour of Europe, but it changed to a tour of Amsterdam and then a cruise through the Western Mediterranean.  We took a red eye on Thursday night, and I learned every bit of why they call it a red eye!  I took some Ambien 2 hours before the flight left and can’t remember how I got on the plane.  Don’t think I slept the whole flight though…  (Lina kept lifting up her limbs and saying she has restless leg and arm syndrome, only to not remember one bit of it the next day!  The wonders of Ambien.)  We did get some awesome airplane cuisine though.  Slimy eggs swimming in garlic butter, stale rock-hard roll, and watery yogurt.  It was a travelers dream cuisine, really.

Where do I even start?  I’m not going to apologize for a few long posts.  We took 800 pictures, I’ll try to condense though.

On a side note, Europeans LOVE their pets!  So much that they have special garbage receptacles to throw away all things pets.

First stop: Zaanse Schans, your traditional old Dutch town.  Full of windmills

And clogs galore!

And Cheese, I LOVE cheese!  My favorite was the pesto, which looks a bit moldy but tastes delicious!  Creamy nutty flavor, divine…

Apparently Holland is known for being overcast and dreary.  I’d never guess that though because it was sunny and beautiful!  I fell in love with Holland.  I’m just a regular little Dutch girl now!

Then we headed to an Indonesian restaurant for an eternal meal.  Europeans don’t believe in rushing meals, that’s only an American mentality.  It’s rude to bring customers their check if they are still chatting (which who stops chatting just because you are ready for the check?!)  We had to ask for the check everywhere we went after an hour of being ignored by the server!  Usually we were lucky to get ONE refill on a drink!

We finished out Day One visiting some friends of the Mackay’s from when they lived in Holland, the Reijnders.  The Dutch always have a treat and a drink for visitors, so they had some shrimp chips (the crunchy ones that are really airy but even more addicting) and some fruit juice.  We had some good conversation, shared some laughs, and as we were getting ready to go, Mark Reijnders wanted to show us his most recent “toy” (not like American toys like boats and 4-wheelers), a BAT FINDER!  We walked all over the neighborhood listening on this device for bats flying unseen above our heads.  Apparently the contraption magnifies the sound bats make so that human ears can hear them.  This way, you can tell different species of bats from each other by the sound they make.  At first we didn’t believe him because we couldn’t hear anything.  Sound interesting?
His face would light up at the faintest sound!  It was like a kid in a candy store!  We sure did enjoy our visit with the Reijnders!  The Dutch also always stand at the door to waive their visitors goodbye, which they definitely did.  (and Bishop says to make sure the guests aren’t coming back 😉

I still have a bad case of the jet lag though, so the next post will come shortly!  Day two was also in Amsterdam, but more eventful than the first day (I know, you can hardly wait…)