WNT European Invasion: It's a Small World Afterall...

Friday morning I took a bus to Utrecht where I met up with Anne and began our day's adventure. We started out by taking a train to Den Haag to visit Madurodam, the smallest city in Holland! Every object in this city is made on a scale of 1:25. There are 16,000 "inhabitants", over 5200 miniature trees, 58 ships, and over 4500 cars in this city. The different parts of the city has some incredibly detailed models of well known places in the Netherlands as well as depictions of well known events that happen in those locations. I actually learned quite a bit about Holland just walking around this city. Looking at this incredible landscape I can't help but feel like playing King Kong for a few minutes...but I restrained myself and didn't cause an international incident afterall! :)

Parliament building in Den Haag

I thought these guys were going to fall off the scafolding!

This heron seemed pretty intent on taking out the goalie

LOL...even the Amersterdam's Red Light District was depicted!

And of course every city has a place where people can go to enjoy some liquid refreshment!

I can't leave Madurodam without feeling like a little person myself

And of course I need a good souvenir :)

Utrecht

After 2 hours of being a giant, it was time to head back to the real world. Anne and I traveled by train back to her home city of Utrecht. We went to a shopping center cafeteria where we ate a quick lunch. This place was chocked full of options! Anywhere from steak to fresh seafood and everything in between. I decided to have a steak with sauteed mushrooms and potatoes (I know...how American of me) for lunch and Anne was a little more conservative with a sandwich. Afterwards we head towards the center of the city for the main (and only) tourist attraction in Utrecht, the Dom Tower. The tower used to be part of a cathedral before a hurrican ripped down the middle part of the building. The remaining part of the church and tower was never reconnected. The tower itself was built to be a fortress and has more than 700 steps. And yes, we did climb all the way to the top!

Top of the world!

Church that was never reconnected to the tower

Reunion of sorts

After all that walking around and exercising, Anne and I headed back to Cothen to meet up with Danielle and 3 of their former teammates for dinner. Dinner was at the Dorestad Wijks Eethuys-Cafe (umm...so I have no idea how to say the name). The food at the restuarant was excellent. I started out with an appetizer of 3 types of fish and had a main course of more fish and finished with an Italian coffee...yuummm :-d During my short time here, this dinner was the most animated I have ever seen Danielle. There was obviously a lot of catching up to do with very little breath for an English translation. I had a good time just watching the exchange of gossip and stories flying across the table from person to person. Usually Anne was very patient and would translate a little if there was a burst of laughter interupting the conversation. At one point Carla (opposing team goalie of the team we're playing on Wednesday) turned to me during one of her stories and said "Sinterklaas comes from Turkey." Hunh? Okay...where did that just come from? I actually knew this part of the Sinterklaas history, but what was the context? So to amuse myself for the last 10 minutes of dinner, I resorted to orgami. Overall it was a great finish to a busy day!