Busy Saturday in Haarlem and Amsterdam

Here are a couple of pictures out the window of our temporary apartment on the 10th floor. It's an H-Tel complex, very nice, safe and clean. In the U.S. this would be the 9th floor, but in the Netherlands the bottom floor is considered floor 0.

Today we drove to Haarlem in the car the company has leased for us. We left the apartment at around 10:00 a.m.

When we got to Haarlem we found a place to park on the street. We got out of the car and started walking down the street. A woman passing by stopped and asked if we knew about the parking fees for parking on the street. We had no idea! There was a machine located down the street that you have to put money into every 2 hrs. when parking in the street. The woman told us about a parking garage, so we moved the car over there.

We were able to get some cash from the ATM at the ABN/AMRO bank.  We opened an account there a couple of days ago (at a branch in Amsterdam), so this bank location will be very convenient when we move. After we got some cash, we headed downtown (Haarlem Centrum). We stopped to look at the flowers at the flower vender at the corner, then continued on...

Our first stop was a little place selling sweets! Oh my, the Dutch love their sweets! Yippppeeeee!  Andrew got a chocolate pastry and I got apple. Both were covered in sugar, and they included another packet of sugar in case we needed more!  We found a place to sit and have coffee and tea with our goodies:

We walked around some and saw quite a few sites:

The waffles are the next sweet I'm going to have to try, and I want to try all of the different flavors!

We had lunch with one of Andrew's coworker's and his wife. We had lunch together at the Jopen Bier brewery. This restaurant has quite a history! The beer was originally brewed by monks in the building which used to be a church in the 15th century.

After lunch we met the landlords and their realtor at the house we're working towards renting. We went through the house together and found that we can rent it fully furnished, which includes all the furniture, bedding, towels, kitchenware, etc. We then went to the landlords' new home where they had moved the furniture that belongs in the other house to see if it's what we will need, and decided it'll be perfect!  So, the realtors are going to work together this week to come up with a price and then we will decide to rent it furnished or unfurnished.

We stopped for gas on the way back to the apartment. Even that was an experience!  The car is a diesel, and of course, there were two kinds of diesel. So, I thought I'd check the owner's manual and guess what?!? It was written in Dutch!  We asked the attendant what kind of gas to use (regular diesel), pumped the gas and went inside to pay.

We stopped at the apartment and rested for about an hour, then headed to Amsterdam for dinner.  While there we went through the Winter Plaza and bought some cheese. Any kind of cheese you could ever want to try is here in the Netherlands!  We bought a Gouda that has been aged for 5 years, delicious!

That's it for the day...it's now 2230hrs, time to "hit the hay"!