Friday, July 4 - Saturday, July 5, 2014

Friday - Here we are on the 4th of July but no fireworks. 

A few days ago when we were at Muiderslot (the castle) there was a story in English mounted on one of the walls. It explained how knights evolved from nobles who protected the women and children, to Crusaders, to others of lower birth who could afford a horse and armor. These later knights were called "sine n...". I forget the complete Latin name. But this was eventually cut short to "snob". I have referred to myself as one on occasion, but I guess not. I don't do well on horses.

Here's another funny story: Linda is having her morning tea with fresh mint leaves from the garden. As she stirs, her spoon hits something hard. She scoops it up and puts it on my plate. I take a look and say it looks like a snail. We look closer and it is a snail. She boiled him to death. Poor little thing, it was shedding it old shell.  The shell was very thin, it broke into many pieces as she tried to get it out and have a good look.  So sorry little snail!  You need to be careful when you get close to nature.

We decided to walk over to the river to the place where the boat to Sparkenburg docks. We were not thinking about taking the boat today, just see where it docks. Linda has been walking around Soest some of the time on her own and wanted to walk down a particular street that parallels the main road through the town but doesn't bend as much. We saw a lot of nice looking houses and after 1+ hours, we found the boat landing. Not much - a sign and a place along the seawall for a boat to pull up and a bench to sit and rest. There was a workman repairing a barrier and Linda talked to him for a few minutes. 

As we started back we noticed this sign on the main walkway. We think its advertising rentals for boats and canoes. I'll check the website later. Maybe a thing to do.

We started back and this time used the main road to come back. Time to take a water break on the way back. No benches, but window sills can be nice.

About 15 minutes from home we were both hungry and tired. We stopped at a small quick food cafe: In Den Houten Klomp. They have a big statue of fries in a paper cone in front and that's what I decided I needed.

Inside Linda spied a small salad and thought it looked good. Turned out not so good - mystery meat: maybe ham salad and potato salad. OK, but not good. I had fries and a Heinken in a can. This was a basic place, but we were somewhat revived. It is the only place where the clerk did not speak a word of English.  No matter, we got what we wanted and smiled at each other.


Ten or fifteen minutes we were at the DLC cafe at the train station and decided an espresso would be nice.

This is what Linda looks like after about two hours on the road.

The cafe is NEXT to the train tracks. This is the every half-hour train to Baarn.

Then, it was three blocks back to the house and rest and Netflix.

Saturday - Liesbeth's band, Queens & Ko, is playing at Gennep, about 1 1/2 hours away. Its a five piece band: bass, guitar, drums, and a keyboard player, which is Liesbeth who also singing backup to Herma, their lead singer. They also had a keyboard that sounded like an organ most of the time.  The band's name comes from the music they sing: Queen, and Ko: the name of the band lead and drummer.  

Linda walked next door at 9:30 to talk to the girls as they had their hair and makeup done. Then we left at 10:30 and followed them to Gennep.  It rained most of the way and we were wondering how the Dutch would handle the concert in the rain.  Not to worry, it stopped in time for Liesbeth's gig.

The people of Gennep were celebrating Queens Day. We're not sure why. We understood that Queens' Day was a national celebration held in late April, early May. Well, anyway, a guy and woman were walking around dressed as king and queen. I talked to them and they were jokesters. They kept refilling their wine glasses.

This large crown must have been part of the celebration. Just over to the side of it on the pavement was a glass section which showed Roman ruins below. This is an old area.

Once there, we walked around the town while the band setup. The rain turned into a trickle. After looking into a couple of stores, we came back to a cafe with tables set up in front of the covered stage and ordered our espressos.

The rain stopped and the girls came over to eat a cheese sandwich and talked to us. Just before the performance we both ordered a schnitzel with french fries and a salad. Very good.

Herma has a very strong voice and sings those old Queen songs as if she belonged to the original group. She really gets into each piece. The band sounded great, almost like Queen themselves. They sound GREAT, GREAT!! They played for almost 1 1/2 hours. The rain stopped before they started playing and the crowd kept growing throughout their performance. Liesbeth kept thanking us for coming but we really enjoyed it. It was a brilliant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

After the performance, we helped pack a speaker, keyboard, and some stands into Kees' Kia and we took Liesbeth back with us.

Once home, we watched TV and Mad Men and Orange is the New Black on Netflix waiting for the 10:00 World Cup game between The Netherlands and Costa Rica. We watched it on BBC so we understood the commentators superfluous comments. Unbelievably, it went scoreless for regular time and then 30 minutes in overtime. The Dutch were criticized by the commentators for not being more aggressive but I think Costa Rica was pretty gutsy. Then came the shootout and the Dutch pulled it out. I stayed with it until 1:00. I think that's the first entire soccer game I have every watched and the longest it can possibly be. There was lots of noise outside. Now onto Argentina.