Two Hands on Your Belly = Two Peas in a Pod!

Last week we were having some problems with the heater, making all kinds of noise and not functioning properly. Our neighbor had recommended a plumber who came to the house last week and took a look at it. He said the "balloon" needed to be replaced.

The plumber, Frank, called Saturday in the early afternoon and said he could come over to fix it. We happened to be home, so we had him come to the house (he said he would be there in 10 minutes!). I had to hurry upstairs to empty out the closet, as that is where the balloon is!  I took all the hanging clothes out of the closet so he would have easy access:

First, he had to drain the system, which is done from the kitchen. He hooked up a hose to the bottom of the radiator and drained it into the kitchen sink.

Then he went upstairs and disconnected the old balloon from the pipe coming out of the guest room closet. The whole thing is just screwed on to the pipe. It was full of water and very heavy. He put the new one on and then had to refill the system. To refill it, he hooked up the hose to the inlet pipe for the dishwasher, which is under the kitchen sink. Andrew turned on the water, while he went upstairs to watch the pressure gauge on the system. When the gauge reached "2", he told Andrew to shut off the water. Then he went from radiator to radiator in each room and used a special key to drain the air out of each one, which brought the pressure down a tad. So, they put a little more water in, disconnected the hose and it's now good as new!

Frank is a great plumber! He was reliable, knowledgable and seemed very honest. I would highly recommend him. His Company is called Frank Hendrikse Onderhoudsbedrijf. His business number is: 023 531 44 66.

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This past Saturday evening, we took our landlords out for dinner. Hans and Angela met us at the house at around 1830hrs. They had brought us a beautiful gardenia scented carved soap, which we have hung up in the upstairs bathroom:

We each had a nice relaxed glass of wine before walking over to the restaurant....

We had decided to go to the Napoli Restaurant in Haarlem:

We ordered a nice bottle of Chianti and started to look over the menu. Most restaurants in Haarlem have English versions, so Hans was kind enough to ask for two of them for Andrew and I. We've found we can "wing it" with the Dutch menus, but we miss quite a bit not knowing what some things are. I do have a Dutch/English App on my IPhone though, which I use quite often!

The restaurant was quite busy, with several orders for their specialty (which I will show you in a minute!), so the waiter didn't take our order right away. When he did come, we had decided on the appetizers to share, which was a combination plate of all different kinds of things, including caprese, carpaccio, slices of provolone, etc.!  Very yummy!

While we were waiting for our main course to arrive Andrew spoke with Hans and Angela about our rental agreement and talked to them about how long we'd like to stay. Our agreement expires January 1, 2014. We'd like to stay till around October, 2014, with a month to month rental agreement. They said they will think about it and get back to us. We have plenty of time, but we know how things can sneak up on you!  We know that it'll take about two months of planning to go back to the States, especially since we don't have a home there!

Our dinner arrived!  I had ordered the lasagna...in memory of Tullio (it was not as good as he used to make!), and everyone else at the table ordered the Napoli Pasta. It is presented it in a "round" of parmigiano reggiano cheese, which we were told has a value of about 1000 Euro!  The presentation is beautiful, the aroma divine and it tastes wonderful!  Watch this!

After melting the cheese, the spaghetti is placed in the round and tossed, then the all the melted cheese from the round is scraped off, and placed in a bowl at the table for everyone to share. Deliziosissima!

While enjoying our dinner Hans and Andrew were talking away, and I noticed that they seem to be like Two Peas in a Pod. I said something to Angela, and she told me the Dutch phrase with the same meaning is Two Hands on Your Belly!

Angela and I:

 After dinner, we walked back to the house and had a glass of port before saying goodnight. What a wonderful evening!

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Our flowers this week:

Since we got here, I've been collecting the corks from the wines we've been drinking. We went out to the Blokker store yesterday and bought a pretty container for them. We have lots of drinking to do if we want to fill it up! We usually have a glass of wine with dinner every other day or so.