Thursday, November 6, 2014

Kinderdijk and Gouda, Netherlands

I fell asleep immediately the night before, and woke up thinking I had had 8 hours – felt so refreshed – to only find it was only 1.24am! Gah. Fell asleep again and woke at 5.00am. No getting back to sleep after that so gave up and worked on my photos.

Anne cooked an amazing breakfast of French toast stuffed with berries and yoghurt for all of us. We then got a taxi to the Hertz Rental car place and hired a car and set off to the Kinderdijk.

The Netherlands put on a stunning day for us to see the Windmills at Kinderdijk!   


The boat cruise I wanted to do wasn't running that day, so instead we walked along the canal..  We even found some fungi. Kicking myself I wasn't carrying my macro lens!


At the end of the canal, we hopped onto one of the boats that was working and hitched a ride back to the visitors centre. 



I got Anne, Jay and Gordon to pose for me...



Such a beautiful place...

Back into the car and we then went to Gouda.
Gouda is another very old town and very beautiful.



We also stopped for lunch and I ordered the eggs.  It was huge – 3 huge slices of bread, lots of cheese slices and 3 eggs.  I ate the eggs and cheese and felt my arteries harden with every bite!  The bread - I couldn't eat!



We stuffed ourselves trying all the cheeses too - so many cheese, so little time!



Cheese was even hanging on the power lines...


After wandering around gouda, we drove back to Utrecht, parked the car near Anne's apartment, then wandered into town for a beer.  Michel met us, and I was taken to this great beer place that is a converted church. I tried a Berry Beer – it was amazing – 3 types of berries-  and the beer was red.  Best beer I’ve ever had.

I could only fit in one though and I was getting chilly so ordered a hot chocolate.

We then walked through Utrecht and went to a Surinam restaurant for dinner.  More Surinam beers and beautiful food – I had a chicken satay starter only, but I was not hungry so that’s all I could manage.  Although weakened and had some ice-cream floating in advocaat and mint liqueur – yum!

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open so headed back home to bed, while the others went out for a few more beers elsewhere. I was asleep before my head touched the pillow!


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