Greetings from Haarlem! (Written by Karen)

We made it over the pond! After hopping from Pasco to Denver to Philadelphia, we took a rear-end-numbing 8-hour flight from Philly to Amsterdam.

The coolest thing about the flight was the German gentleman who sat with is in row 12 ABC. He was “C” to our “A” and “B”. He was traveling home with his wife and two teenage kids after a 3-week stay in the US. The rest of his family was sitting further back and he was stuck with us, but he didn’t seem to mind. We had lots of time for great conversation between naps.

Tom gets a little shut-eye between conversations.

Our German acquaintance's home town is Halle, Germany, which boasts the only grass tennis courts in Europe other than those in Wimbledon, England. So that’s where Wimbledon competitors go to train. Also it’s near the town of Werther, the original home of Werther chocolates. But apparently the Werther factory is now located in Halle. He and his family are frequent travelers all over Europe and North America, so he had a lot of good information for us about Europe, and some interesting stories about his travels around our own country. He’s seen more of it than we have!


We arrived in Amsterdam at about 9:30AM on Saturday. Really nice airport.

 Now I understand why the Rick Steves folks start us out here: everyone we have encountered so far speaks English. They’re easing us into the experience of being helpless strangers in a strange land. We took a bus from the airport to Haarlem, where our hotel is located. Even the bus driver spoke English, and was very friendly and helpful. There were a bunch of teenagers at the back of the bus, yukking it up as teenagers do, and I had the strangest impression that if I could just get the duff out of my ears I would be able to understand what they were saying. Dutch is very similar to English in syntax and inflection, and many of the words are actually the same as in English. It’s definitely more guttural, but also kind of pretty to listen to.

When we arrived in Haarlem, we had about a 15-minute walk to the Ambassador Hotel. In the Grote Markt (Main Square) there was an outdoor market going on, and we passed through it rolling our bags behind us, but didn’t stop to shop; we thought we’d get rid of our bags and then come back, but when we finally got to our room we took a nap instead. So we’re kind of sorry we missed that—it was probably a Saturday event so we’ll be gone long before it happens again.

We did take a walk in the evening and had dinner at the Carillon, a restaurant/bar which featured Asian-style food, cooked by a couple of genuine guys of Asian ancestry, and also featured some really good beer.  Tom had one, I had two.  When we went to bed I slept really well and apparently snored a lot.

The Ambassador Hotel is a fine place, with a very interesting (and certainly unexpected!) Egyptian décor. The breakfast buffet this morning was really great. After breakfast there was an impressive rain storm going on outside, so we are postponing our walk and I’m doing this!

The rain has stopped now, the sun is shining, so it's time to walk around Haarlem!  It's a really beautiful, old, Baravian-esque town, so we'll take some pictures to share later.  Bye for now!

Well, here we go....

In response to requests from our kids and a couple of friends, Tom and Karen will try really, really hard to post some stuff here during our 3-week trip to Europe.  We are scheduled to fly out of Pasco Friday morning, August 27, and after hopping around a bit, we will land in Amsterdam on the morning of August 28.

For both of us 50-somethings, this is our first foray off the continent of North America.  Are we excited?  Definitely.  Are we nervous?  A bit.  But our kids--both of whom have traveled overseas--have assured us that Europeans are actually the same species as we are, bipedal, use tools, have a written as well as a spoken language (several actually), all the usual stuff.  Oh yeah, and they have some really remarkable food and we should pack loose pants with expandable waists.

And besides, this is a Rick Steves tour, so Tom doesn't have to obsess about planning things and being in control, because it will all be done for him in an excellent manner.  So we have faith.  And we also have less money than we had before we signed up for this thing in April, online, on a Saturday night, after watching the promotional DVD and consuming a glass of wine or two (okay, Karen was actually the consumer of wine, as usual.)  It was sooo easy.  They accepted a credit card for the small initial deposit to reserve our spots.  But then we had to pay "cash on the barrelhead" (to use one of Grandpa Gibson's favorite phrases) for the remainder.  Which is good policy, so folks don't go spending money they don't have.  Had, but don't have now.

So stay tuned!  If we run across any opportunities to connect to this thing called a blog, we'll at least post some pictures.