Morning Weather—Not so Gouda!

Today’s plan was to get up early walk to the train station and head for Gouda. Every Thursday in the summer Gouda holds an open air cheesemarket, and it sounded like fun. During the night, however, there was lots of rain, thunder, and lightning. Around 5:00 a.m. I rolled over and noticed that the bedside clock was no longer working. The storm had knocked out our power. Around 6:30, we were still in the dark and the rain was pouring down, so we decided to sleep in and pass on the Gouda trip.

Vicki:  The Power flashed on long enough before it stabilized completely for me to make a cup of coffee before going out again. We have a Keurig-type espresso machine in our room which is very nice first thing in the morning. There is also a tea kettle water heater if we want tea.  They leave nice little chocolates for us. Very pleasant . . .

Around 7:30 the power started coming back. We had turned a light on, and it would light up for a few seconds and then go dark again. Things finally seemed to get fixed sometime after 8:00. So after showering, getting dressed and eating breakfast, we decided we’d make a trip to the Rijksmuseum—the national museum of the Netherlands. We’d been before, but we’d always had time constraints on our visit, so we decided we’d do it again and take our time.

We got there around 10 o’clock and went right in without any lines. We went slowly through the things we liked and moved more quickly through the others. By around 1:00 p.m. we’d had enough and went down to the museum’s café and had something sweet to eat before heading back to our B&B. We took a round-about route and spent some down time reading and resting.

Vicki:  We’ve been at the Rijksmuseum before on tours with Viking and Vantage. They take you through to hit the highlights of Vermeer and Rembrandt then give you 45 minutes to cover essentially 3 floors of wonderful exhibits. Today we enjoyed the Impressionists, Delft pottery, ship models, furniture, musical instruments, etc., etc.  Who knew they had a collection of really, really old guns—blunderbusses. It was a real luxury to take our time and linger over what really interested us. I jogged through the guns pretty quickly, but the Delft exhibits were extraordinary.

We also made reservations to eat at Indrapura, a restaurant we’d tried last year with our friends the Simpsons and Frisbys. Given the history of the Dutch in Indonesia, it’s not surprising that Amsterdam has tons of great Indonesian restaurants. We had a rijsttafel or rice table. The one we chose had small portions of 20 different dishes. It was great, but we couldn’t finish it all.

So we’re back in the room watching the BBC to see how the Brexit vote goes, although Trump is getting almost as much coverage. Today’s step total—14269.

Vicki:  We’ve been watching the news on BBC.  Trump isn’t liked very well in Scotland.  Evidently he keeps referring to himself as Scotch, and the locals find that confusing.