Well, we are definitely wearing down so it's good we're at the tail end of our trip. Unfortunately, Janet woke up sick this morning so she stayed home to rest. Libby also feels like she's coming down with a cold--she's getting stuffy. Today Libby and I went to a town south of Amsterdam called Utrecht. It was a good deal larger than I expected. We had originally planned to take the fairly grueling tram ride all the way to Amsterdam Centraal, and catch the train from there to Utrecht (like we did when we went to Arnhem), but I realized we could take the tube to Centaal from a tram stop just a few stops away. Then, on our walk to the tram stop I realized we could take the metro from that stop to a train station that is closer to both us and Utrecht. I'm annoyed we've been suffering this +40 minute tram ride into the city corner when we could be getting off at Leydan station, and taking the metro (a ~7min ride) to the same place. Live and learn. Hopefully we will ...
Today was our last food tour for this trip. We did the Grand Dutch Food and History Tour. Although I'd say it was a little light on the history. We started out with apple pie from the Papeneiland Cafe. The cafe has been there since 1642!!! The apple pie was amazing. I didn't take pictures of everything. We tried 4 Dutch cheeses, 4 Dutch meats, frites, bitterballen and Indonesian chicken satay. This is the bitterballen. It's a thick stew/gravy mixture that they bread and fry then dip in dijon mustard. It's pretty good. I had mint tea twice on our tour. They just put some mint leaves in hot water and it's delicious. I don't know why it's never crossed my mind to do that at home./ Some more pictures of Amsterdam. Tomorrow we are going to check out Utrecht, it's a 30 minute train ride from Amsterdam.