HAARLEM

 Trip Date: June 21, 2019.  [Click on pics to enlarge]

We got a leisurely start as John & Meghan's 2-star Michelin dinner last night took 4 hours and they didn't finish until midnight!  Five courses with an "eating in the kitchen" theme so they could watch everything being prepared. Very nice!  Once we finished cereal and lugged the bags down that stairway, we waited out front for our van-taxi which would take us to the starting city for our bike tour, Haarlem.  An uneventful and unscenic trip, so no pics.  Our hotel was the Staats, a nifty boutique housed in an 1800's building.

 It was pretty weird inside our room, with the glass shower facing right into the room and an island sink plopped down in the middle.  Strange, but posh.  Stranger still was the menu of "options" one could order.  We did not.  The extra bed was for Isla for the night.

Haarlem is much more laid back than Amsterdam, much less crowded and frenetic.  We got here around 11:00, so after unpacking we went looking for a clothing store so I could get a shirt.  Found a nice store, and a nice shirt, at a gulp price, at least by my standards.  Oh well, Loni says it looks good on, and should be good for future trips as well.  Had lunch at another waffle/crepe place, not as gigantic as the last one.  We had scheduled another canal cruise, so we walked through the main plaza on our way there,

and along some small canals.  Our cruise turned out to be exactly what we avoided in Amsterdam.  Big long boat (not shown), covered over with glass ceilings (so plenty of hot sun, not so much breeze), and a recorded commentary that told us very little.  Mercifully, it only lasted 50 minutes.  But, it did have one very excellent feature.  They provided slices of real apple pie with whipped cream, and they were excellent.  The girls concurred.

Somewhat sated with pie, we returned to the hotel for a brief crash, then off to the main plaza for people watching and some beer (detect a theme here?).  On sunny evenings, there are zillions of folks out and communing.

We had dinner in a huge sushi restaurant just off the square.  Again, excellent.  We'd gotten most of the way back to the hotel when Loni realized she didn't have her RED HAT!  That hat, or its replacement, has been on her noggin for at least a decade of our travels.  It's how I locate her in crowds.  We hustled back and, thankfully, it was still there. That silly thing draws comments wherever we go, and she was very happy to get it back.