Utrecht, Netherlands Week 8-Finale

Monday July 17th was a travel day for us. We took a couple trains from Bremen to Utrecht. At one of the train stations, we wanted some food and to sit down (the boys stood/sat in the middle of one of the trains again, so were tired), there weren't many options, so we ended up going to a McDonalds-if you know us, you know that my boys have never been to a McDonalds before, it's not someplace we go to. But as true Americans, we decided it was the best/only place to sit and get some cheap food quickly.

All of our stuff in the McDonalds in the train station
The entire journey took us close to 6 hours and when we arrived in Utrecht we walked from the train station to the Airbnb, but unfortunately it started pouring on us. We could see this wall of water coming towards us and we just ran to an overhang on a building to hide out under for several minutes. When the rain slowed down a bit, we kept going, it was a 25 minute walk dragging our suitcases in the rain. We were all drenched by the time we arrived. This Airbnb is a townhouse in a residential area of row houses. It has a lovely back courtyard and is 3 stories tall. The boys have the top floor, but Kyle has to sleep on an air mattress this round. Paul went straight to work and I went off to the grocery store when the rains ended. It's a great grocery store and I was all ready to check out, when my Apple Pay with my Visa card didn't work. I tried our Am Ex on Apple Pay, still no good, I then used my physical debit card, also a Visa but it didn't work. I was holding up a long line of customers and the cashier didn't speak English and I don't speak a word of Dutch. She called over a supervisor who told me their machines don't usually take American credit cards, but we could try it over at the Service Desk. None of the cards worked over there either, so at this point I had to succumb to using an ATM in the grocery store, which of course charged me to use. This was the first time in 7 weeks of travel that we've had an issue with using our credit card. I was astounded. I came back and did some research and found out this particular chain of grocery stores just don't accept US cards. Luckily there are two other grocery stores a little further away. Morning tea in the courtyard

Tuesday July 18th, to be like the locals we must bike everywhere we go, so we have two bikes that came with the Airbnb, but then we went and rented two more. When I say The Netherlands is a biking country, Utrecht is the epicenter of the cycling community. The infrastructure for biking is amazing. There are many places where there are entire bike roads next to or instead of car roads. Bikes trump everything here. All the biking lanes have their own signals and lanes. Generally you can ride on either side of the street, because the bike lanes are painted red with dotted lines down the center to allow for two way traffic. On some bigger intersections, you could have a clump of 30 bikes waiting to cross the road, and you better go when the light turns green and use your hand signals if you plan on turning. Every street is lined with parked bikes, but the cool thing is they have bike parking garages. More on the later. Back to what we did on Tuesday. We decided to see the city from the extensive canal network that they have here, so Braydon and I rented Stand Up Paddleboards and Kyle and Paul got kayaks. We paddled through the canals on a circular route for 1.5 hours. Only one person got wet...Braydon fell into the dirty cold canal. He was not happy after that. The rest of us enjoyed the paddle and seeing the city. We grabbed a bite to eat afterwards at an outdoor café (where Braydon had to sit shirtless, because his shirt was still soaking wet!) That evening I biked to an Aldi where I was able to use my credit card for groceries. Luckily the bike Kyle rented has saddlebags on the back, so I was able to put the groceries in there to bike home with. I felt like such a local!

Wednesday July 19th, we biked to the train station, which is so much faster than walking, and parked the bikes in the largest bike parking garage in the world. The bike garage is just like a car parking garage with ramps and different levels, in lanes and out lanes and all the sections are numbered. Each section also has top and bottom parking racks for the bikes. Very efficient. This garage can hold over 12,000 bikes. The next biggest one is in Tokyo which holds 10,000 bikes. A cool thing about European bikes is that they all have built in locks on the back wheels, so you don't have to chain them up to anything, although some people still do as an extra measure of security. We then took a train to Gouda where we went to the Gouda Cheese Experience. It was a bit cheesy, but also a lot of fun! ;) They made the museum into a competition, so it was kids against parents and we were given a fact sheet to become Cheese Masters that we had to answer throughout the museum. It came with personal audio guides. We learned about the whole cheese making process starting with the cows! We all thoroughly enjoyed the competition part and that it was very interactive. I guess technically the boys (Kyle) won since Kyle answered one question very precisely, whereas Paul and I answered it a bit more generally. At the end, you have a cheese tasting. We all liked the old Gouda the best. One main thing we learned was how to say the name of the town and the cheese, we Americans have been saying it all wrong. It is pronounced with a hard H sound at the beginning, almost like you are saying "Howda". We of course bought some cheese. Paul had to get back to work, so he took off and the boys and I explored Gouda a bit more, it's a cute town/village. Much smaller than Amsterdam and Utrecht. I really liked it and just wandering the old lanes. Since my birthday was the next day, the boys decided they were going to buy me gifts in the souvenir shops, it wasn't much of a surprise the next day when they gave them to me. Ha ha!

Putting the bikes on the top rack
Not a great selfie, but you get the picture of a bike garage!

Thursday July 20th, my 46th birthday. If you recall, last year we were in Greece for my birthday and we went on a day cruise around Athens, but I was sick, most likely with Covid. Luckily, this year, I was not sick. I tend to plan my own birthdays so I get to do what I want to do, this year was no different. We took the train into Amsterdam and went to the Anne Frank House (not really a celebratory thing to do, but definitely moving and important.) Paul and I read the book a few months before coming here, and Braydon got 1/2 way through it, so we were all very interested to actually see what the Annex looked like. It really is amazing how they hid there for so long, of course, as most know it didn't end well for the Frank family, luckily Anne's diary was saved and then later published so everyone could read her story. Pictures were not allowed inside the Annex, so I only have one from the pre-program and one from the outside. After Anne Frank House, we had time to spare, so we wandered around and grabbed some fries, have I told you how street fries are a big thing in Europe? There are vendors who sell French fries in paper cones, with your choice of toppings. In England and Edinburgh we had very yummy curry sauce on our fries (chips), but the curry sauce outside of England hasn't been that great, it's more of a gelatin based sauce. But regardless, we get fries a lot!! At 5:00 we had a canal boat tour scheduled, it was a small boat with only 8 people and a driver on it. There was a couple on the boat with us from Oak Island, NC! The other couple was from Cali. The driver gave us a lot of history of Amsterdam and a little about Cape Town South Africa too, since he was originally from there. We had brought a bottle of Prosecco with us and some Gouda cheese cubes to snack on while on the boat. It was a very relaxing boat tour where we could ask whatever questions we had. After the boat tour I had made reservations at a restaurant called Long Pura, an Indonesian place that is known for their Rijsttafel. As England has adopted Indian food as a main "local" cuisine, Amsterdam has adopted Indonesian food as a "local" cuisine. Rijsttafel is a rice table. Ordering there was easy, we just had to say we were having the Rijsttafel and they brought us food. Apps started off as satay skewers, one fish, one shrimp, one chicken, one beef. They were all very good. The seasoned rice is served wrapped in banana leaves to each person, then all the other dishes were set in the center on warming plates to share. We had 6 protein dishes and 3 veggie dishes. We had shrimp, chicken, goat, beef, etc. Then dessert. It was all very delicious, we all really enjoyed it and stuffed ourselves full. I chose this place because of their reputation to make things gluten free, which they were very attentive to and made all the dishes GF so I didn't have to worry. Luckily we had a 20 minute walk back to the train station, 30 minute train ride and 8 minute bike ride to work off all that food!