Tuesday/Wednesday, June 2 & 3

Sometimes, the days go by and not much happens. That's one of the nice things about staying in a place for an extended period of time. I know I've said that before, but its true. We're here in Holland to visit, relax, and be on vacation, not to go, go, go every day and try and see all that we can. So, we may miss stuff. That's the way it goes - maybe next year.

The other excuse for not doing much is that it has been cold and wet: drizzly and windy. Perfect to stay inside. Having said that, we still had to go to the street market in Baarn on Tuesday. But, we drove instead of walking. I always get some french fries at the frites' truck and Linda looks for food and clothes. This day, she bought a pair of pajamas and later some socks at a store. 

One of the streets in Baarn with the church steeple in the background.

Linda in front of the health food store with her buckwheat flower to make crepes with later.

We walked down the main street of Baarn and stopped in a decorator store that had large flowered curtains in the window. We think we like them for the Washington condo. We're thinking about it. 

On Wednesday, it cleared up some. We walked past the windmill and over to the other side of town to pick up my jacket at the cleaners and take a couple of shirts. Linda doesn't do shirts. 

I didn't really want to walk back, so we decided to investigate the local buses. The guy at the espresso cafe there at Soest Zuid said we could use the same cards we have for commuter trains (Sprinter) and trams in Amsterdam for these buses. That makes it so easy. While we drank our espresso and tea, we had watched buses come by about every 10-15 minutes, so we tried it out. Worked great. Instead of getting off at the closest stop to the house we stayed on to see where the bus went. We got off on the backside of the Albert Heijn grocery store. As we walked out to the main street a young woman heard us speaking English and stopped us to ask about tour prices. She said she was thinking about starting her own company that would pick up people at an Amsterdam hotel, take them on a city tour and deliver them to a boat/canal tour boat. All inclusive for maybe 35 - 45 euros. We thought that sounded about right. 

After talking to her we started talking to a young man who was with a group promoting something we didn't understand. He asked us where we were from and when we said Florida, he guessed maybe Fort Meyers. We told him we were from Bradenton/Sarasota and asked how he knew Fort Meyers. He has a friend who is currently doing an engineering internship there. He told us he spent a semester as an exchange student in Iowa and is now back in Holland and will start his masters program soon. Nice guy speaking excellent English. Interestingly, he didn't ask us why we came to Soest which is a common inquiry. People always want to know how we first arranged our home exchange.

Linda continues to experiment with making bread-like stuff with different types of flour. Today, she made crepes with Nutella and bananas. Hmmm, good.