An Adventurous Saturday

Saturday morning Kim and I went grocery shopping with Tante Joke.  We went to an outdoor strip of stores and everything there was zo leuk!  There were men selling rookworst in the middle of the street (and giving delicious free samples).  Kim and I also couldn't believe our eyes when we saw how cheap everything is there.  She got a hair straightener for less then eight euros!  And she's been very happy with it yesterday morning and today.  I bought shampoo, conditioner, and hairspray.  Boy, was it ever good to have conditioner and hairspray for my shower the next day!  I didn't bring conditioner to the Netherlands, and my hairspray bottle's sprayer decided it didn't like the plane ride, and so it doesn't work.  For three days I had to pour it onto my hand and then try to rub it onto my hair.  It didn't work very well. 

I had plans to bake some cookies.  It was Lodewijk Maclean's 5th birthday the next day (Sunday) and Tante Joke thought it would be nice to bring cookies along.  The only problem was that baking soda doesn't exist in the Netherlands.  They don't sell it anywhere.  Thankfully Uncle Larry and Tante Hanneke had some though.  Uncle Larry agreed to trade us baking soda for a cookie, and I thought that was a pretty skookum deal, so I gave him six.  There aren't any chocolate chips in the Netherlands either, but I knew about that ahead of time, so I brought a huge bag of them from Costco. 

Saturday afternoon the Macleans went out for lunch with friends, and Kim and I were on our own.  We decided to be adventurous, so we hopped onto our wonderful Dutch bikes.  We wanted to go to the university so we'd know how to for next week.  We brought two maps, and googled the directions.  Unfortunately, it still didn't take long for us to get confused and a little lost.  A kind jogger came and asked us if we needed some help, so that got us a ways further.  Altogether I think we asked directions about five times.  The fifth person happened to be going there himself, so we just went along with him. 

Erasmus University is enormous.  There are two separate campuses, and the one we'll be going to has several buildings, one of which is at least twenty stories tall.  There were some bells playing from a tall tower, and we watched, mesmerized, for several minutes.  Then it was back to our fietsen (bikes) to continue the adventure.  We were headed for the Kijk-Kubus, or cube houses.  On the way we saw a tall, old, gorgeous building, so we stopped to admire that for a while too.  It took a bit to get there because we were on the wrong side of a canal.  We eventually found the cube houses and they were amazing to see!  Probably more because I've about them and seen so many pictures, and then there they were!  I still have a hard time believing I'm really here. 

After admiring the famous cube houses, we wanted to see the Laurenskerk, a church which is about 600 years old.  Only finding it proved to be a bit difficult.  Thankfully we're pretty good at asking directions (we were good at that in Canada too), and I know enough Dutch to understand it if people don't speak English, but most of them do.

It turns out that on Tuesdays and Saturdays there is a huge street market by the Laurenskerk.  Kim and I walked our bikes through there.  Everything in Holland is so fascinating!  The Laurenskerk is so tall and so beautiful and ornate.  We would have gone inside, but if we did we wanted to go together and I didn't know where the key was for my bike chain, so we just marveled at the outside.

Then we had to bike all the way back home to Rotsheide 16.  On the map it was clearly faster to first go North, but we decided to follow the Maas River back to Erasmus because we knew how to get home from there.  Boy were we ever tired though!  We'd been on the go for just over three hours, and it was almost an hour bike ride back.  I timed it once we passed Erasmus and it took 36 minutes (although since we were so tired we biked quite slowly).  But at least now we have a ballpark idea of how long it will take us to get to University. 

So that was quite the day!  After returning we were extremely glad to get hot chocolate and stroop waffles for snack from Tante Joke.  The stoop waffles here are zo lekker! 

We finally made it to the famous Erasmus Universiteit!

A random fancy-looking building that we had to get a closer look at.  Only it took a while to get to it because there happened to be a canal situated inconveniently in the way.

The cube houses! 
And for mom's benefit: maybe the architect happened to have a genius dream?

The Laurenskerk.  We also went there for a church service/concert on Sunday evening with Oom Gert Jan.  The organ and choir were fantastic!

And yes!  We found our way home without even having to ask directions!