Den Haag, Keukenhof, Gouda, Delft and other things I mispronounce

Anne

Hoi everyone. It’s been a while and we have done a lot of Europy stuff since we last wrote so I’ll get right to it. On Tuesday we began our day at the Anne Frank house. It was was quite amazing and recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity to see it. Later that day we took a train to Den Haag, a smaller city outside of Amsterdam. Once again we couch surfed, this time on Albert’s couch. He was a fantastic host and his place was incredible. He has a habit of constantly hosting travellers so when we arrived we were greeted by 4 french girls, 3 Estonian girls and 2 Italian girls cooking supper. Most of them were also staying at the house but there was plenty of room.

The next day Albert lent us bikes so we could ride to Leiden. From there we met our friend Jente and took a bus to the Keukenhof which is the worlds largest flower garden which mainly contains tulips. I’ve never seen DawnO so camera happy. I’ll include some flower pictures below but if you want to see more we can provide. Once it was checked off DawnO’s bucket list we took a bus back to Leiden and discovered our bikes were missing. We found out that we had parked them in a no bike parking zone and every day the cops come by and load up all the bikes in that area and impound them somewhere on the other side of town. The sign indicating the parking zones was about the size of a sugar packet and was in Dutch so we were destined to fail. Leiden must make a lot of money off that tourist tax because there were at least 30 other bikes parked there when we dropped ours off and 30 more when we found out they were gone. Sadly we had to leave them behind and tell Albert their fate. The next day he was gracious enough to drive to Leiden and pick them up for us after he dropped us off at the train station.

Gouda

Yesterday we headed to Gouda (the G makes an H sound) and sampled a LOT of cheese. We then took a train to Delft and saw the local potters hand paint glaze onto their famous pottery. Both places were quite charming and like the rest of the country they were preparing their town for Queen’s night (tonight) and Queen’s day (tomorrow). Will and Kate? Will and Schmate… No one in the Netherlands will be tuned to the royal wedding while these days are going on. Think Mardi Gras, only dress everyone in orange and legalize marijuana.

We’ll blog about it next!