June 16, 2014

Monday, June 16, 2014

We're back in The Netherlands and finally over our jet lag. We will be here all summer, returning to the States on September 5th. For the first time of the 4 years that we have come over, we came straight here to our little town of Soest without stopping somewhere else first. And, we will be going straight home when we leave. Our plan is to have a boring time here and not do much. There are a few exceptions planned: Lynda and Frank Adamson will arrive on July 29 for a couple of weeks and we'll drive to Hamburg Germany and also explore the area around Bingen where St. Hilldegard lived; later in August two women from Anna Maria Island are coming for a few days and then Linda will leave with them and the three will drive to a cabin near Marseilles, France. Linda will fly back a few days before we leave for home.

Because I don't expect to be able to say anything worthwhile every day, I will be posting only when something comes up worth commenting on. I'm sure you don't want me to tell how many chapters of my book I read each day.

Having said all that, there are a few things to report for our first five days. Because we didn't have enough British Air frequent traveler miles to get a discount this year, we booked on a Dutch airline called Arkefly. We had returned from Holland on one of their planes previously and it was just fine. There is good news and bad news about this airline. The good news is its a direct fly (almost), the bad news is it flies in and out of Orlando. So, we rented a car and drove three hours over to Orlando Sanford Airport - nice little airport. We flew down to Miami and unloaded and picked up new passengers and then it was straight to Amsterdam. We had a aisle and window seats. Nine hours from Miami.

As you know Linda is learning to play the sax and wanted to practice during our trip. Instead of bringing her sax with her, she found a shop in Muidenberg (about 30 minutes from the house) where she could rent one for a couple of months. Kees, our host, stopped by the shop on our way home from the airport on Wednesday. It was amazing to see a small shop solely dedicated to selling, repairing, and renting saxophones in such a small town. The owner was very welcoming and picked a nice b flat instrument for her. So, we arrived at the house with her instrument and she was ready to go practice.

The afternoon was spent visiting, eating a little, and trying to stay up as long as we could. The next day Kees took us over to a place called Kinderdyke. Yes - that's the children's dyke. Its a series of dykes and 19 old fashioned windmills that pump water in a two stage method. We walked up and down the dykes and watched a short film where they told us 3 different versions of how the place got its name. It turns out no one really knows.

On Friday, we were up early to take Kees and Joke to the airport. Later in the day, after Linda practiced her horn, we walked downtown and sat outside at Jon Metz's chocolate, wine, and coffee shop. I had an espresso and Linda had a glass of wine. They sell Leonides chocolate from Belgium. Yum, very good. We, of course, bought some.

From time to time little problems arise when you're traveling. Even though I had visited a Verizon store before we left and signed up for their international plans, my iPhone was not seeing the local mobile network when we arrived. I called the helpline and found that my phone and Linda's had been set up incorrectly. After about 5 minutes, the rep was able to fix it and we were operational with the correct plans.

Another problem was Linda's Nook. While we were on the plane, it decided to reboot and load an update to the software. After that she couldn't locate any of her stored books. After we arrived at the house with its Wifi network, I was able to use the computer to log onto the Barnes & Noble site and then log her Nook on and restore her library. Just a few glitches but all handled using our modern tools. Yeah for computers and the Internet.

On Saturday, we were invited over to Jose and Han's house, just a few doors down the street, for coffee in the afternoon. They take good care of us. We have toured several places with them in the past and they want to take us to Haarlem on the train in the next week or two. They can't do it right away because they are babysitting a cute little fat dog for the next week or so.

We found ourselves sleeping a lot. There are little birds that sing all day and into the night. The sun doesn't go down until about 10:00 so its hard to realize when to go to bed. Sunday was a very slow day, but we were finally able to get ourselves over to the park about 1:00 for a small festival of entertainers and a few food items. We met a young lady who rents out her small apartment in the middle of Amsterdam on Airbnb. She told us her mother was singing with a group over at the restored windmill and we could take the horse drawn wagon over there. So we did. On the way over there was a commentary on the history of the area - in Dutch. When we arrived at the windmill, the singing was over but we accidentally met the mother of the young lady we had talked to at the festival. She gave us details on how to contact her daughter directly to rent her apartment which is: elenoor.meijer@hotmail.com. It was such a pretty day - temperature in the 60's and blue sky - that we walked back to the house.

Be back in touch when something happens.