This may be beginning to sound repetitive about places I visit - but I LOVED Holland! What's not to love about a country where every town has a town windmill, little houses line cute canals, and there are delicious things to eat?
Caroline lives in a cute little town called Wasenaar - which happens to be where the Prince and Princess live! Sadly - I had no opportunity to meet them and become BFF with the Princess. Of course we also went into Amsterdam! I get so excited arriving in a new place! My first view of Amsterdam was of cute, colored houses lining the canal! How perfect! I fell in love at first sight!
We arrived conveintantly starving, since we quickly encountered a fresh cut french fry stand! Caroline had long been talking up "pinda sauce" - a Dutch speciality that is put on lots of things - including fries. What is amazing is that it is peanut butter based! My peanut butter obbsession is now clear to me! Clearly, I inherited my ability to eat PB with a spoon from the jar from my ancestors eating pinda sauce! So it's in my genes - and you can't fight genetics.
So - the fries were AMAZING! Truly the perfect fry! Perfect thickness, firmness, and saltiness! Smothered in pinda sauce, and served in this giant cone. It was seriously enough fries to feed all an entire wooden-shoe-wearing family! And possibly their sheep. (I saw lots of sheep in Holland)
But the fries were not what I came to Amsterdam for. I came for Panneokoken and Olliebollen. I knew we were having Panneokoken later for dinner, so needed to locate Olliebollen immeaditely! We were riding the tram over to the Van Gogh museum when I saw the bright lights and pink awning of the stand! Obviously - I excited the tram and went!
Now, to be honest - I didn't expect to really LOVE to Olliebollen, because it is fried dough and usually I'm not a funnel-cake kind of girl. But this was not like a funnel cake! It was a delicious, fresh, chewy, dough, ball of sweet goodness - covered in an obscene amount of powdered sugar! In other words - it was the dough form of heaven. It took me about an hour to stop talking about it. Only the Van Gogh was able to take my mind elsewhere.
Van Gogh is one of my favorites, and due to my art obbsession I had to see the Van Gogh museum! It was very cool because they had a lot of his works that I had never seen - along with some quite famous ones. Caroline was especially proud that he painted in Den Haag - the town next to hers.
We wandered around the musuem, in complete awe and admiration for about an hour - when we went to leave and realized it was POURING rain! zut alors! So we had to with our coats over our heads run back to catch the bus! The rain made me tres triste because we couldnt just wander around the cute streets - which is my favorite thing to do in a new place!
We were riding along - about to head to train station when my eyes spotted a cute square decked out in Chirstmas lights - and more pink stands selling treats! STOP THE BUS!!!!
We exited, to find ourselves in the cutest, Chirstmasy, little square in Amsterdam, that Caroline instantly recongnized as one of the favorite places! There was even an ice rink - but it was closed because of the rain. Rain is kind of a fun-sucker.
So instead, we went into a little bar - that looked like the North Pole inside it was decorated - and I ordered the first beer I have ever drank in my life.
Ok - it wasn't exactly beer - as Caroline made a point to tell me everytime I gloated - It was a cider beer. BUT the name beer is in it - and for a total beer-hater that is a big step! The cider was delicious - but a sip of Caroline and Maddy's real beers secretly made me want to gag. So I will just stick to who I am. A wine, champagne, and cocktail kind of girl - and I like it that way.
That night - that pancake dreams came true. We got panneokoken!! Panneokoken is like a mix between a crepe and a thin crust pizza. They are HUGE, round doughy pancakes, that are thin and having toppings of your choice on them. There were 102 different kinds of toppings! This is a problem for an extremely indecisive person! So - after much debate I decided on apples and bacon to get both a salty and sweet experience in one!
There are few moments in my life that I can recall eating something so delicious. I am going to have to try to re-create them. Or just move to Holland for a bit so I can eat them until I am sick of them. Which would never actually happen since there are 101 kinds left to try!
Saturday we had Thanksgiving! It was so nice to be in a home and with a family! Caroline's Aunt and Uncle from Paris were there, along with some of their close friends. It was nice to have so many people like I would have at home! Her mom made a DELICIOUS dinner! Thanksgiving is the best meal of the year.
I did really missed my family though! I got teary eyed talking to my mom! I've been away from home so long now! And Thanksgiving is such a big deal to our family - I hope I never have to miss Holidays again. It was so nice to be in a home and have a great friend to spend Thanksgiving with - otherwise I would have spent the day crying and skyping.
Caroline took us on a little tour of her town - which included the beach! There is such a beautiful beach 5 minutes from her house! How did I not know Holland had beaches? It was literally freezing, and we were all in our dresses. But it was so nice to see the sand and the ocean! I LOVE the beach! It made me very excited to go to Flordia with Josh in January!
That night we went out in Leiden. Which was very fitting because it's where the pilgrim left for the United States from! Leiden is such a cute little town! Little shop-lined streets, all decorated with garland and lights! Unfortuantely - it was POURING again! We had to run about ten minutes through the rain, so I arrived at the bar soaked in my boyfriend blazer. A couple gin & tonics helped warm me up though!
What's so fun about traveling and when you stop and think - Wait a second....I'm in Holland right now! It just makes everything 50% more fun!
I haven't mentioned yet that Caroline has some fierce Dutch-speaking skills! Dutch pretty much sounds like gibberish to the french-trained ear. So its quite funny to hear two people speaking gibberish to each other and it all making sense! She is quite Hollandaise!
Like everyweek - Sunday came too fast! I got tons of postcards (so keep a lookout in your mailbox!) and tons of stroopwafels!! These amazing dutch cookies that I LOVE. Some are for Biggie - who asked me to get him some. Some are for my daily pleasure! We had an early train back to Paris so my adventure Hollandise came to a fin.
So I have come to the conclusion that I have to go back in the Summer! I have to see the rows and rows of rainbow-colored Tulip fields, I want to go lay out on the beach in Wasenaar, and most importantly - there are still 101 kinds of Panneokoken to try!!
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