Thursday, August 21 - Friday, August 22, 2014

Thursday - OK, so its been a few days - we've been busy.

Today was mostly resting and staying around town. Its market day in Soest. So, off to town the girls go and I meet them at The Proef for espressos and other coffees. Diane keeps asking for caramel lattes, but that's not happening.

The weather was iffy: clouds and intermittent rain. Back at the house, Joy and Diane wanted to ride bikes. We found two of the four that could be adjusted to fit and off they went. Within 30 minutes, they were back - drenched. It poured most of the time they were riding. Dutch weather you know. They looked like drowned rats.

Later, the girls went shopping and came back with fish. Drinks and vodka and wine works.

Raw herring and paling (eel). This is very Dutch.


That was day one. We'll do better tomorrow.



Friday - We had talked about Giethoorn, a town north of us with mostly canals and walkways with no driving of cars in the town. We drive for about 1 1/2  hours and with Linda's help and her iPhone's GPS we ended up at the exact place where Kees and Joke took us in 2011. The rain was threatening and there were not very many people around, but we persisted and got onboard the rented an electric motorized boat. This was the plan and we were going to do it.

There were no crowds, so the only boats on the canal were the guided tour boats. 

There are beautiful homes along the way in addition to some shops and restaurants. Its a great looking little town.

The girls seemed to like the view.

Lovely lawns and ducks.

On the way to the restaurant we were out on the open water. Its some kind of lake, but we don't know a name.




We docked the boat as the rain was starting and scooted into the restaurant.

As we ate, this was the scene. Not encouraging. During lunch the waitress told us that the town was boggy and the canals were dug out of the peat that had formed. During that digging, they found goat bones. That's where the name came from. Geit = goat, I think.

We ate slowly and waited, but the rain continued. Eventually, it seemed to let up and off we went.

Umbrellas up and the little electric motor turned up to full power. Instead of continuing on the open water in the one-way direction that we were supposed to go, we decided because of the weather, we could go the wrong, protected way up the canal. That worked except when we met a tour boat. At that point, I had to stop, back up and sometimes turn a bit to let him pass. But, no one yelled at us. After a half hour of constant rain, we arrived back at our rental spot where there was a restaurant that we could dry out and have a coffee. The nice guy didn't charge us for being a 1/2 hour late. It was wet, but great.

An 1 1/2 hour drive back to the house and we were in for the night.