Day 3 Meeting the Rick Steves Group and Tour of Haarlem

Today is the day that we meet our tour group, the people who we will spend the rest of the trip with! The morning started off rather slow as we enjoyed our last opportunity for a while to sleep in. It was not until around 10 that we started moving around the room. Showers had to be taken, then mom tried to run to the grocery store down the street a few blocks. Unfortunately it was not open until noon. Instead we grabbed our bread, the rest of our strawberries, a couple carrots and a banana each and had a nice little brunch. After our meal we spent some more time just relaxing since it was only a couple hours until we were going to be meeting the group, hardly enough time to venture out and do much of anything. 

Eventually 2 o' clock rolled around and it was time to go downstairs and meet the group members. The meeting lasted just over an hour. We introduced ourselves and heard everyone's name and where they are from (it will take a bit more time to learn names and about each person). We set up "buddies" outside of our travel group, someone to look out for us when/if we are not with the group. After we each had our designated "buddy" the meeting continued. Our guide, Dimitri led the meeting of course.
We had about a half hour break between the end of the meeting and meeting up with the girl who would be our Haarlem tour guide. It was misting outside, nothing too terrible, but I kept my camera covered up just the same. Our tour guide, Jodi, was super cute as she talked about this and that about Haarlem. She said that Haarlem is such a perfect city. She said it is known for being "content" because everything is so perfect. She also used lazy and cheap as descriptions of the people. It was all very amusing and delivered in such a cheerful way despite the rainy weather.

She spoke about the bikes, since there are over 800,000 bikes in Amsterdam. More than half of the population owns a bike and uses it daily. According to her bikes are popular because they are cheap and the people are lazy, too lazy to get in a car and drive to their destination. In the time it would take to get in the car and get it started they would already be where they needed to be by bike. Bike theft is also the biggest crime in Haarlem. Our guide has had her bike(s) stolen three times. Two times she had her bike lock in place. One of those times the entire bike was stolen except for the front tire. A couple bikes down there was a bike missing a front tire. It is pretty common for others, who have recently had their bikes stolen, to steal someone else's bike so that they can get home. The Dutch word for bicycle is fietz (Said like feets, as in There is a bike coming, watch your feets! That is how I remember it anyway). So whenever a bike was coming down the road we would start calling out, "Fietz, fietz, fietz!"
Another thing that Amsterdam and Holland are very proud of is their drinking water. The guide went on and on how the drinking water is fantastic, better than many places around the world. It is soft water because the water has to filter through the dunes. Because of that it also is very rich in vitamins and minerals, much more so than the mineral water that you can purchase. This is the water that comes straight from the tap too, which is a plus. 

She took us down the road to a church with a tall, white spire on top. She told us that the white tower used to be on St. Bravo, but due to its weight the building was unable to support it. So they went and made the one that sits atop the church and build another church for that particular spire. Earlier, during our travels around Haarlem we thought it was interesting that there was a black spire and a white spire. I had no idea that the white was the original spire for the church.

Along the way we were stopped in one area listening to Jodi talk about her beautiful home when Emily's umbrella decided to misbehave. Emily was standing toward the front of our group circled around Jodi in a half circle. She was holding her umbrella at waist height when it flew off the handle and landed a couple of feet in front of her. This had everyone laughing at the rogue umbrella. 
Picture
We proceeded down the street and stopped before a “coffee shop” that was located across the road from the windmill. There we talked about Holland’s tolerance of marijuana. While we were discussing this topic outside the “Best coffee house in Haarlem” the shop owner came out with a marijuana cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The guide joked telling him we should all get a free sample. He disappeared into his shop while we continued with our discussion, and moments later he emerged with a marijuana cigarette unlit. He offered it to someone in the group, anyone who wanted to take it. No one did, and so our guide stepped forward to take it. (He later claimed that he gave it to one of the other gentlemen on our trip.) I have decided that I am not into marijuana smoke, or any smoke for that matter. Still, it was very interesting to have him come out and try to sell to us while we were on this tour of the city. Why wouldn’t he? Still, it is a different world here.
Our tour took us around to the windmill once more, however this time they surprised us with a tour through the windmill! It was very neat for them to provide us with this experience. An additional surprise experience was bitteballen which is a HOT breaded ball of meat. It actually tastes much like a tuna casserole. They provided a semi spicy cheesy sauce that we could dip them in. It was a nice and tasty treat, but as I said very hot and it held heat in quite a bit. 

So then we had our tour of the windmill and learned about the function of the mills. They were used for a variety of functions, other than moving water. Some were used for cutting wood, others for crushing corn to make corn meal. Some were used to make paper. I had not realized that there were so many different kinds of mills! There are even different types of wings on the mills. They have changed over time, and some are different based on the area in which they are being made or used. While we were in the section where we would have been able to go out onto the “balcony” of sorts it was pouring rain. We looked outside and that was about it, unfortunately. We continued on the tour and went upstairs to see more of the gears and works of the mill. After that part of the tour we came back down. By this time the rain had stopped, so I snuck outside to take some quick pics of the view before returning to the ground level. It was fantastic. I am in love with windmills!
Our guide led us down the river and back to Grote Markt. She diverted us down a street where she had us stop and look at the buildings and the sidewalks. A long time ago the people living in Haarlem were mainly illiterate and so they went and built pictures into the sidewalk and into the store fronts to let the people know what was in their stores. For example there was a button on the sidewalk, and buttons fashioned into the wooden frame of the door, a taylor. Another place had scissors on the sidewalk. This person might have been a barber. 

A bank or a grocery store

A Barber Shop

I'm not sure about this one...

Linens Factory

Taylor

The front of the restaurant
After looking and guessing at some of the buildings we were led to an Indonesian restaurant for our first group dinner. To my surprise Jodi was also our waitress. By this point we were hungry, and that is a good thing too! The Indonesian meal consisted of several plates containing different meats, veggies, sauces, etc. We had a type of chicken curry (which was not too spicy), a beef in coconut sauce (very spicy!), white rice, yellow rice, chicken kebobs, chicken kebobs with peanut sauce, there were a couple different cold salads, there were shrimp chips (which are weird in that you touch your tongue to it and it crackles and sticks to your tongue), and a few other dishes. They spread them out in places before us on candle lit warmers. It was quite the experience. I think I had about 6 glasses of water, especially around the spicy foods. For the most part though it was flavorful and not too spicy. It was nice to sit and get to know some of the people we were going to be touring with as well. It was a very social meal as we passed plates around from person to person. 

After dinner we decided to head back to the room and relax before our trip tomorrow to Amsterdam where the activity level is said to be strenuous. Some of the other group members went out to do some beer tasting, but that was not really up our alley. Instead we stopped by the gelato shop on our way back. I got stroopwaffle and hazelnut gelato. I LOVE HAZELNUT GELATO! It was a lovely ending to the lovely day.