Britancelands

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.

 Today was museum day. This time, however, it was an OPEN AIR MUSEUM!!!! Think Hoevander, or Pioneer Park, or the "Conservation Site" if you were a student in Bellingham of a certain vintage. Then give that place hundreds of acres, and millions of dollars.  That's right, folks. We got windmills! We got canals! We got old trams! We got Egyptian Geese! We got chickens! We got old farm houses from hundreds of years ago that you could just go in and trapse about in. We got essentially a Dutch Disney for history and animal lovers--right down to an old timey tram that can run you from section to section in a circuit. All the buildings are authentic, and have their own history. They were moved to the site to help tell the history of mostly regular people of the Netherlands. It took us a tram ride to Amsterdam Centraal, and a 60ish minute train ride to Arnhem which is south east of Amsterdam. From there it was a short bus ride to the Openlucht museum. We arrived a bit after 11, a...