Europe Diary - Post #1 by Kathy

It is 9:00PM on our first night in Europe. Our plane landed at 11:00AM this morning, which was 2:00AM Arizona time, and despite all attempts, none of the four of us slept on the plane. I kept everybody up as long as I could today, to try and convert them to Europe time. Patrick was falling asleep in his pancake at 3:00PM today so after much rousting, I pushed them out until about 5:00PM when I let them go to bed for the night. Rebecca had some complaints that it was still light under the angled wall window where their bunk beds are situated, but she quickly conked out, and here it is 9:00PM, it just got dark, and guess who's the only one up?!

I want to compliment Mike right now on his fine driving of our Renault diesel Kangoo, manual drive so I am useless, that we are leasing. I want to compliment him now before he totals it. Just kidding. There aren't a lot of barriers between the canals and the roads out here in the Dutch countryside so I have only said, "Please don't put the Kangoo in the canal," about twelve times so far. He loves me :)

Pick up of the car was pretty uneventful. We took the Crowne Plaza Hotel shuttle to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. From there we were directed to a covert location on the second floor of the hotel, behind several closed doors, where was seated a man in a stretch white nylon leotard top with a metallic Peugeot emblem above his nipple. On later inspection, when he stood up, we noticed that he was wearing what I like to call "house-party jeans," extra electric-blue with back pockets that end just above the knees. The nice, farm-boy-like, middle-aged innkeeper that checked us in at the hotel was also wearing these jeans which we have also affectionately called "Simon's jeans" after our Scottish soccer coach who was young and hip and wearing these jeans a few years ago. So Simon, if you're reading this... what have you done with European fashion, man???

I have just a few pictures to share so far... The ferry, which is the only way in or out of Kaag... not sure why they don't just build a bridge... must research this...

Our Renault (brown) in front of the hotel:

Kaag village life walking down the main street... it takes about 5 minutes total to see the whole town...

And the pancake... We weren't sure what meal we were having... breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but our innkeeper assured us that, "We can have pancake anytime in the Netherlands..." :)