I got up at 8:00 and felt like the king of the world. I did not realize how bad my mattress at the rental house is until I realized how refreshed I felt after sleeping here. I got up and looked out over the Dutch countryside. Wow, what a beautiful place. I had an amazing hour of doing nothing but sipping tea and thinking about my European adventure thus far. At 9:00 is was breakfast time and I did not want to keep Vera, the name of the B&B owner, waiting.
Breakfast was in the sunroom. Calm classical music was playing and the leaves of the bushes in the garden outside fluttered in the wind. Vera had lined up one amazing breakfast. An egg, a bun, three types of jam, two types of cheese, a smoothie, coffee, milk, fresh fruit with icing sugar on top and yogurt with honey and walnuts on top. I was in heaven. After breakfast I called Wessel because he said that he would pick me up in the morning to bring me back into town.
I checked out the playground adjacent to the B&B while I was waiting. In the playground there was one piece of play equipment that is not often found in Canadian playgrounds: a WWII German anti-air bunker. I went into it and checked it out; it was very bunker-like. Wessel came and drove me into town. He gave me a tour of his university; it is housed in the former town hall of Middelburg, a very old Belgian style building complete with flying buttresses. UVic ain’t got nothin’ on that.
We stopped for coffee in front of the main building of the university and chatted for a while under the blue sky. Wessel asked if I wanted to go to the Haag in the afternoon and catch a train home from there, of course I said yes. We were going to leave at 13:00 so it gave me some time to further explore the town. We parted ways and I set off.
I walked along the canals on a gravel path; I walked past windmills and tulips galore and the whole time I was lucky enough to have the sun warming me to an early summer like temperature. I picked up some bread and amazing Dutch cheese and sat on a bench along the side of the canal and just took it all in. After the canals I checked out the rest of the town, everything from the small, completely garbage free, alleys to the churches and buildings rebuilt in the old style after the German bombing raids.
At 12:30 I started back to the Residence building to meet Wessel. I got there and found out that two girls would be sharing the ride with us. Joy and *_____* are two nice girls originally from Africa who are also studying at the Roosevelt Academy.
Two and a half hours later Wessel dropped me off in The Haag and we parted ways after some goodbyes. What a nice fellow. Now I had 3 hours to wonder the city until my train came.
I found The Haag to be similar to Amsterdam in the fact that it had canals and a big city feel, however The Haag had a more serious undertone to it and less tourists. I walked around for a while and had a seriously overpriced beer then got on the train home.
I got home at 22:30, talked on Skype for a wile then hit the hay.
No comments:
Post a Comment