To start with, I spent all of the Saturday before Rachel arrived cleaning, preparing her room, buying flowers, and food, so that everything would be ready for her when she got here. Halfway through the day, surprise! A new roommate moved in, completely unannounced. Now that's what I call reliable landlords. In any case, it turns out, the new roommate is an absolutely wonderful chap named Shaun, from London, and I am pleased as a peach he's living here now. I was just a bit miffed, because Shaun moved into the room I had been cleaning and making ready for Rachel. Alas! So I moved myself upstairs, and got the attic room ready instead.
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| Super cute, right?! |
The next morning, I woke up bright and early - around 4:30 to be exact. Rachel's plane was due in at 7, and in order to get to the airport that early, I had to bike to the train station and get a red-eye, slow (for some reason, the slower trains are called "Sprinters" in Holland, whoever named them that is a crazy fool) train, that left around 5:45 AM, and got to the airport around 6:45 AM. So! I arrived at the airport, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, expectantly awaiting Rachel. I went and bought her a chocolate croissant and a coffee, because, you know what, that's what you need when you get off a trans-Atlantic flight.
And so, I went to the arrivals gate. And waited. The plane arrived - hooray! And I waited for the baggage to get on the belt. It got on the belt. Everyone started pouring out of the arrivals gate. I looked, and looked. No Rachel. I started to get that kind of sick, anxious feeling, when you feel that something might be wrong. The completely calm (AKA anxious-as-a-squirrel-when-someone-is-stealing-her-nuts) person that I am, I assured myself that she was just taking some time to get her baggage together or something. An hour passed. Around 8:15 or so, I started to panic a little bit. What if she didn't know where my house was? What if they were drilling her about why she was coming to Holland? What if she brought like, some bad thing, like wine or something, and they had her in a police chair, and were interrogating her?! Some people say I overreact. I like to think that I'm constantly honing my imagination, so that one day, I can write excellent novels.
Rachel showed up around 9. She had to take a later plane (for which she got paid $400 Continental, JEALOUS). She had sent me a message on Skype, but, alas. Here's how Skype works - you only get messages when you and the other person are both online at the same time. I logged off the night before, then she sent the message. I logged back in before I left in the morning, but by then, she had logged off, resulting in no message for poor Kee-ligh. Ah, well! I was so glad she was there, I almost started singing!
So, off we went. I took her back to Utrecht, and set her up in the attic room. We got ready, and went to find some pancakes! Rachel had a bit of a rough time getting used to the bikes - it does take a lot, to start and stop constantly in the city, with the cars all around. But we eventually managed to make it to Theehuis Rijnauwen (which is, as you know, my favorite place in all of Utrecht). We met Clement and Mary there, and had a lovely brunch/lunch type thing.
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| Rachel got a savory pancake, with red onions, red pepper, paprika, and cheese. Mmm. |
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| Nom nom nom. I had a pancake called a "Tasty Tom" - it's got dates, nuts, and apples. I LOVE it. |
After we had delicious noms, we went for a walk in the park around the pancake house. It was lovely! Lots of families, with kites. After our walk, we hopped back on our bikes, and headed back towards the city center. We went exploring around the city center - we found this church courtyard, it reminded us of Harry Potter. Naturally, we took glamorous drama shots in the arches.
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| So European, zee Rachel! |
We went back home and I made us a delicious tamale chicken pie. It had a cornbread base, with shredded chicken, salsa, chili seasoning, and cheese over it. The cornbread alone was worth the recipe. It was incredibly good.
Here's what it would look like if I had a totally awesome camera and could take amazing food photography:
So, that was Sunday! Monday, we went to Amsterdam, and had a wonderful day sight-seeing. We started the day off with a walking tour - our tour guide was Australian. She had a tendency to say, "Awesome." We went through the red-light district, and we looked at the Oude Kerk (Old Church), which lies in the middle of the red-light district, so that sailors (in the olden days) could have their sins of the night before (or for the night to come) forgiven. Ha!
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| Getting Ready for our super-spiffy walking tour! |
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| The Oude-Kerk |
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| Some street art outside the Oude-Kerk - supposedly representing the red-light district - an anonymous man and an anonymous woman - the church was nooooot too pleased when they found this one morning embedded outside their church |
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| The old headquarters of the Dutch East India Company. It must have smelled so good when they stored all their spices in this area!! |
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| Old-fashioned medieval plaques, indicating services offered at different houses/roads |
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| A secret courtyard in the middle of Amsterdam |
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| Street art |
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| Chocolates! We shared a pepper chocolate, a coffee chocolate, and a raspberry chocolate |
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| With the "I am Amsterdam" sign in the museum district |
After our walking tour, we wandered to the south of the city, to the big street market, on Albert Cuypstraat, where we bought a stroopwafel (mmm, tasty Dutch food), and looked at all the clothing - I bought a totally sweet jacket, which appears in the "I am Amsterdam" photo above. We meandered to the museum district after that, but unfortunately, got there just a bit too late to do the two things we wanted to - go to the Van Gogh museum, and do the "Jenever Experience" a guided tour of how the Dutch liquer, Jenever, is made, and the different flavors, etc. Alas! We had some tea, and went back to the Albert Cuypstraat area, where we had an incredible, and inexpensive, Mediterranean dinner at a restaurant called Bazaar.
Tuesday was a day of rest. We just stuck around Utrecht, went into the city for a bit. We ate some mid-afternoon snacks outside, by the canal, with some beers.
Tuesday night, we got onto a bus, at 10:00 PM, heading for London. The bus trip was a story unto itself, and I will leave that till the next post, methinks.
With that, I wish you all a pleasant evening! As usual, I started writing a post at around 8, and am finishing around 11. It's the ADHD, I tell you. It gets worse, the more I work with the kids who have it! I think everyone in my lab has the same complaint...
