Another week in August

On cold days this is a perfect place to hang out to read or watch TV.

This silly cat seems to like to be close to me. Sometimes on my lap and sometimes she just walks over me to get to the window.

She's in charge - table, chair, sofa, or in your face. Whatever.

Joke and Kees came home for the weekend for two parties. We had a nice visit. Linda and Joke went for a walk down toward the river and found these sites.

Its always surprising to us that just a few steps away from this bedroom community, there is farm land and you can find a woman driving a horse pulling a wagon.

Linda continues to bake non-gluten goodies. These are new: surprisingly light and nutty biscuits. Good for sandwiches or just butter.

Lynda Adamson, a dear friend, shows up with an overlap with Kees and Joke for a couple of hours. 

On the night after, we walked to de Smickel restaurant to have Dutch pancakes with our reflexologist and her husband again. 

The next day we drove to Delft to the pottery factory and the old town for some shopping. After a visit to the factory gift shop and some purchases, we drove to the old town and had lunch. 

Lynda had a very large carpaccio, I had a really great hamburger, the best I have ever had in the Netherlands, and Linda had a zucchini and mackerel soup that she liked.

After lunch, I walked over to a coffee cafe called Doppio and had one. While the girls visited the new church, shown here first, and then the old church. In the old church was the grave of Vermeer. 

Afterward, we all had coffee, me again, and then drove back to Soest through heavy rain. A good day.

Last Week of August

This is a great place to walk and I need to get out and walk more, so we go out almost every day. Many of the houses in town have been landscaped with hedges, trees, bushes, and fountains. This picture shows one house on our route with a pond and a bridge and a bench to sit and enjoy the scene.

This year we have been plagued by bees. They may be dying elsewhere, but not here. There have been times when we can hardly drink out coffee without having them flying around our heads.

Even when there is no sugar, they're around. This is a bottle of water. The couple with two children sitting beside us were eating poffertjes (Dutch mini donuts) and were forced to more inside the restaurant. While David was visiting us, every time we sat outside and drank coffee or tried to eat anything the bees attacked him. He spent a great deal of time swatting.

This day we ate lunch at the Proef, one of our favorites, and then walked down the main street and turned onto the main road and had a coffee at The Grand Cafe. We sat outside, this time with no bees, and admired the pretty pond, trees, and bridge across the way.

There seems to be an elder care facility across the way. There was a parade of walkers and wheelchairs as we enjoyed our coffee.

On our way back, we passed probably one of the most popular places in Soest - an ice cream store. On a nice day, there is always a crowd outside this place. As we passed it and walked up the hill to the house there was a constant stream of parents bringing their children down for some ice cream.

This is just a driveway but it reminded us both of old fashioned driveways in the Pittsburgh area with plants growing in the middle.

One of my jobs is to mow the grass. Rain was forecast for later in the day and the grass was starting to get a little high, so I got to it. From the time I get the lawnmower out of the back shed to the time I put it back is about 15 minutes. Not a really big deal. Once every second or third time I trim with the battery powered clippers. That adds 5 minutes.

When I'm finished, I get to sit out back in the garden and read.

Linda is back in the kitchen, baking and cooking. Here we have a homemade breadstick and meatballs for dinner.

And here we have some paleo dinner rolls she whipped up for a lunch sandwich - surprisingly light and tasty.

Third Week of August

We have a week alone before we entertain more guests. Monday we sent Liesbeth and Peter off for a short vacation to his hometown of Nuremburg, Germany. We will watch over Duco who is staying home and part of the time sleeping with friends. Noor is at sailing camp for the week. 

Check out the sky. This is what they were doing yesterday.

We walked the path around the chicken farm and did some grocery shopping.

Tuesday we took our 3 buses and went to Amersfoort to look for a vitamin shop. We're getting pretty good to this - 45 minutes we were in the middle of the old town. 

Bikes are not an unusual site but, one without any padding on the seat is.

Found the vitamin shop. Its about 3 times larger then our Eco Plaza in Soest and we purchased everything we were after. Ate soup and shared an egg foo young at a Chinese restaurant. 

The waiter spoke very good English and we had a nice chat

Afterward, Linda shopped for clothes but couldn't find anything she liked. We walked around a little trying to find an antique store that we had visited before and saw an egg cup. We found it but it was closed for vacation until the end of the month. It is August. 


A little further we came upon Dr. Chocolate. Well, we had to visit him and bought a truffle apiece with amaretto in it and ate it immediately. Also a box of dark chocolate coated apricots. This gave us an excuse to look for a coffee cafe. The cafe turned out to be the old outdoor fish market. An espresso and chocolate, yummy. 

We intended to eat sausages and sauerkraut for dinner but when we stopped by the fish truck which only comes on Tuesday we ended up buying some raw herring and kibbling (fried fish). Before we got home, we stopped at a bench in the park halfway up the hill and ate our fish. I know - you're going to laugh at me saying we walked up a hill. It really is a small hill - probably the only one in Holland. The sausage and sauerkraut will have to wait.

The cat feels very safe and comfortable around us.

Wednesday morning we invited Duco and a friend (Noud) over for breakfast: American pancakes, bacon and eggs, and leftover herring  and eel. They ate most of it and we had a nice discussion about connecting up to Netflix from their mobile phone with a special device and watching SciFi movies. They had been in Amersfoort yesterday while we were there, buying this device that would get them connected. They rode their bikes over there in about 25 minutes.

Duco plays baseball and Noud plays field hockey (a big sport here). Yesterday was the first day of practice for hockey and Noud got hit by a stick near his eye. Nothing serious but he had a bandage.

Another week or so in Holland

I forgot in the previous post of an afternoon walk we had with David. He wanted to see the Soestdijk Palace. I think it was originally the Queen's summer palace. It was used enough that a special rail spur was built to provide access. This was a very good thing because it created a train station 3 blocks from where we stay and we use it all the time.

The palace is 2.2 miles from the house. We decided to walk it. About 2/3 of the way we stopped to sit and rest at a restaurant and they offered us free water. That was so nice and the day so lovely that when we came walking back we stopped for dinner. When we got to the palace, I decided to walk back to a bus stop we had passed and sit. David and Linda went around the far side of the building and tried to buy a ticket. The woman at the counter would not sell them a ticket because she said they didn't have enough time to see everything. Even over their protests of not wanting to see everything, she wouldn't budge. So, back they came and we had dinner.

We're alone now and occupy our time with walks and excursions around town.

We've started walking around the chicken farm that's up the hill from the house.


These chickens were pushing each other around to get into a hole.

There are a lot of hedges around many of the houses and some are cut into interesting shapes. Lots of greenery

On a Friday, we were invited to have a fish dinner with our neighbors, Liesbeth and Peter, and their kids: Duco and Noor. The fish platter consisted of two types of shrimp, trout, salmon, halibut, mackerel, flounder, and paling (eel); most of it smoked. They served the fish with what seemed to be toasted wonder bread. Its supposed to be Turkish bread but we don't know exactly what that is. They put butter and a piece of fish on the toast. After we finished that, we had raw herring and onions. We were told that you can't eat the herring until after eating everything else or all the other food will taste like herring. I ate all of it.

On Saturday, we met our reflexologist, Marjoleine and her husband, Peter, at a restaurant called Madonna in a town down the road called Amersfoort. Marjoleine was born and still lives in this town and two of her three sons work in this restaurant. One is the sous chef and the younger one is a dishwasher. We got there by taking three buses, got there early, and felt very proud of ourselves. 

We started with appetizers: Linda ordered carpaccio and I asked for a caesar salad. The caesar was large with 4 pieces of chicken. We shared both. Then I had a delicious hamburger with fries. 

Marjoleine had a tuna dish

Linda and Peter had steak medallions.

At the end of the dinner, we had coffees and teas. Linda had a fresh mint tea, which she loves and cannot get in the States. It was served in a glass, mug. While she was waiting for it to cool, it exploded. Glass everywhere and tea. Linda ended up with a few pieces of glass on her and a little tea. I had glass on me and there was glass on the floor,  two tables away. No one was hurt, miraculously. The waitress said they had been having problems like this and had switched to a heavier glass. Whatever. They gave us the wine free as a compensation.

Other than that, it was lovely evening with new friends.
We even got back to the house on our own using the same 3 buses. 

On Sunday, Kees and Joke returned to a dinner we had invited them to. They were coming back from somewhere up north to babysit their granddaughter, Emmie. Linda prepared a simple dinner of hamburger, cauliflower, and cabbage with apple cake for dessert. They brought Emmie with them. She's 3 1/2 and cute, cute, cute. She speaks Dutch very clearly and some English. Liesbeth and Peter came over for some wine and to say hi.

First Weeks in Holland, 2018

  Every year we, or maybe its just me, say we're not going back to Holland anymore. And, then we go. We trade houses with a Dutch couple named Kees and Joke. So, here we are again in a little town about 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam called Soest. 

Usually we pass them in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, as they go to Florida and we come here to their house. But this year there have been some complications: Joke, the wife, has a chronic lung condition and is taking a new medication. Because of that, she has to stay close enough to Holland that she can have a checkup once a week. Therefore, they decided to take off in their caravan (pulled trailer) and visit places around the country. Keep in mind that if you drive more than 3 hours in any direction except north, you're out of the country. If you drive north more than that, you get wet.

  On a separate note, Liesbeth, Peter, and their two kids from next door, who we have become close with over the years, came to the US for a visit of 3 weeks. We delayed out departure a few days so they could stay with us in Washington for 3 nights. We showed them around the town: a driving tour, a tour of the Capitol, and a look at the Library of Congress. 

  On their last full day with us, our friends Janie and Dan, who have visited us in Soest and met Liesbeth and Peter, came over to the condo and prepared a delicious chili feast. More Americana. 

  We flew to Holland the day after they left. It worked out very nicely. Our airline was KLM and with an upgrade to Premium Economy it turned out to be a lovely non-stop flight.

  Because Kees and Joke had not left when we arrived, Liesbeth and Peter opened their house to us for the first two weeks. They have a lovely home. The only problem was the heat. Our first week was hot (92 degrees) but coolish at night - no a/c. We also inherited the care of their cat called Mookie. She is an outside cat, but very sociable. When we move to a different place in the yard, she comes with us. She gets locked in the washroom at night.

  One night, Kees and Joke hosted a cookout for us and the neighbors: sauages and hamburgers on the grill with salads, 16 people. Coincidently, Lynda Adamson had prepared a cookout as an introduction to the US for our Dutch friends and their German traveling companions the night we picked them up from the airport.
It was all very nice and everything was eaten.

  Another day, Kees took us on a driving tour through some of the country side that we had never visited. 

Up and down the dykes and to a cheese shop where they made their own cheese.

  
They called it "old" cheese and we all had samples. It was pretty good. The room was full of rounds of cheese.

  Then we stopped by a town called Oudewater. This town became famous in the 16th century for having accurate scales. Not only were the scales used to weigh produce, but suspected witches. It was widely believed that witches weighed more than average. If you weighed within the limits, you could receive a certificate testifying that you WERE NOT a witch. Contrary to our beliefs, Linda passed and was declared a non-witch and received her certificate.

Stopping along the road for a coffee out of a thermos and a apple - the Dutch way - frugal.

This is the way the Dutch store their hay. Its stacked under this roof and as they use it the protective roof descends and continues to protect the remainder.

Per plan, Claude Immer, from Switzerland visited for 4 days during our 3rd week. Without a car, we took the train to the Hague and saw Vermeer paintings at the Maurithaus museum. The museum is in a lovely old house that has been well maintained.

Each exhibit is in an ornate room that gives an intimacy to the whole experience. We visit it whenever we can.  The star of the Vermeers is The Girl With The Pearl Earring.

The Nightingale is another famous painting and it is not a Vermeer.










We also made it over to Sparkenburg for their very large street market which is only held for 3 Wednesdays during July and August. 

These ladies are making doilies the old fashioned way. I say making because its not crocheting and its not knitting. Its something else.

Sparkenburg was originally a fishing village, separated from most of the land around it by water. They speak with an odd dialect and are very conservative.

Claude wanted to visit the Reijksmuseum in Amsterdam, so she and Linda took the train downtown.

The museum was designed by the same man who designed the renovations to de Haar.









I stayed home so that I was sure I could get to my reflexology appointment. Linda was a little late but made it for her appointment too. I rode the train home with Claude

  The last day that Claude was here, our friend David, who lives in London and is an architect, came over for 3 days. 

He spends a lot of time in Indonesia and brought us some gifts.

We also moved over to the other house the second day he was here and Claude left. David rented a car which gave us a little more freedom. 


We drove to Naarden, which we had been to before, but this time spent a little more time at it. We went into this church with this fantastic wooden, carved ceiling and this monstrous pipe organ.

This is, of course, was only some of the 150 pipes.

Naarden is a town completely within a fort. But, this fort is built of earthen works in a star configuration. After the invention of the canon, this type of castle or fort was more effective as a defense. All of the forts in North America were built this way. Yorktown, Virginia, comes to mind. 

Down the road was the de Haar which looks like a "real" castle: it has a moat, turrets, and battlements just like you want a castle to have. It dates from the 1100s, but, as you would expect, has been rebuilt numerous times. The latest work was done in the late 1800s. Its also furnished as it was in the 1920's and 1930's. Up to 2000, it was used mostly for movie stars to stay and party. It still is rented out for special events. A wedding party was using it the day we were there. A couple of sisters still use it as a holiday hangout. 

  After David left, we spent our time getting reflexology treatments on the other side of town, walking or taking the bus to street markets, and watching shows on Netflix.

    To get to our reflexology appointments, we have to walk past a chicken farm and this beautiful rooster who Linda is drawing 

and thru a corn field and past a restored windmill. It helps me get my 10,000 steps for the day.

On most days, which are in the 70's, sunny, and low humidity, we walk to the center of town for a coffee and once in awhile some raw herring - a very Dutch thing to eat. Here's Linda having some. We also eat paling (smoked eel). Its pretty good. Even I ate both fishes.

Linda goes for walks without me sometimes and discovers things like this VW Bus. Why are we interested in this kind of thing? Heidi's Doug loves anything related to VWs, especially the old buses.