Haarlem, the original

Day two started with the breakfast of champions in a quaint outdoor market in Haarlem, Holland.  These little strope waffles are made with lots of molasses and sugar.  They are a perfect combination of crispy and mushy!  They went too fast to get a picture of a whole one.

The market sits at the feet of this beautiful cathedral

The outdoor market sold just about everything from produce to animal products to wallets!

There is quite a bit of retail around the corners of this market!  But thankfully it doesn’t open up until around noon, so we didn’t have a chance to spend all our money the first day!  I found another cheese place that I loved and bought a little brick.  He told me vacuum-packed cheese would last two weeks unrefrigerated, but I was a little worried when I got back to the states and saw it was pretty soft and deformed… Hopefully I don’t die when we eat it!  We headed to the Haarlem train station

Just know if you are here and you have to go to the bathroom, it will cost you .5 euro, and you will be looking for the WC (water closet).  Contrary to what I was looking for, the WC is not the train that takes you into Amsterdam!  But, the Dutch like to ride their bikes.  Bishop teases that one of the families he knew in Holland would take vacations as far as they could ride their bikes.  But, immediately after we got off the train, we were flooded with bikes!  They have parking structures for them even!

We walked around Amsterdam, had a delicious lunch outside because we had the most beautiful weather.

And then we took a canal tour.  It was interesting to hear different facts about Amsterdam.  I guess that the Dutch pay taxes based on the amount of their house that is on the street front, so a lot of the houses are very narrow and deep.  There is a different and lower tax (or maybe no tax) for houses on the water.  So, lots of people have house boats (definitely not the luxurious house boats I’ve seen in magazines, much simpler).  The canal tour chalked this up to be the over population and lack of housing in Amsterdam forcing people to find housing on the canals…  It was weird to be traveling through the city on a boat with people in their houseboats watering plants, drinking beer, and going about life as usual!

We also toured the Anne Frank house, which was extremely small and VERY dark, and walked through some more markets and bought some souvenirs as we found our way to the Red Light District and the Heineken museum!  One girl into the Red Light District and I was ready to find something happier so we went to the flower market!  I was in heaven picking out tulip bulbs to bring back!

Light years after walking all through Amsterdam we arrived at the Heineken museum to find we had to pay 16 euros to get in!  Since we wouldn’t even be able to partake of the free samples after the tour, we decided to buy some things in the gift shop and head on our way.  We went back to the market in Haarlem where we started to see it winding down.  We looked for a restaurant and only found LONG waits!  Europeans like to take their time to eat!  I wanted to get something genuine Dutch, but I guess that Dutch food isn’t for the American palate.  Bishop said that while he was there he got a fine meal from a family in their ward of endive wrapped in bacon and cheese to mask the flavor of the endive.  What we had that night wasn’t much more awesome, and it was SO expensive! $$$$  We hurried out from dinner to meet another Dutch family from the Mackay’s ward, the Denhollanders.

They were so fun to talk to!  It felt like old friends catching up.  They were very interested in the prison system in GA (because that’s who I work for…) and wanted to talk all about what to see in Europe.  Sister Denhollander made some delicious apple pie (with raisins) and herbal tea, and brought out some savory Dutch cheese and crackers.  This trip was definitely an overkill of bleu cheese, which I may never be able to eat again.

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