We have met many Dutch travelers over the past year, and after hearing their stories we were happy to discover that the cheapest way back to America is through Holland. A little wrinkle is that we will land in Toronto, not the US, but close enough.

We spent our last overseas weekend hanging out in a beautiful city. Between the tree lined canals, countless old churches, row houses, cafes, and the start of the fall foliage it was impossible not to be charmed by the city. We went on the Free Tour of Amsterdam during a constant rain. Bill and Elaine will be happy to know that we used the umbrellas again. We discovered that fall is the rainiest season here and we had overcast or rain fifty percent of the time. We had to use all of our layers while we walked around the city to stay warm and Heather resisted the urge to buy mittens. We also checked out a little history at the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum (State museum) and Bols Museum. Bols is world famous for their genever, a precursor to gin that we’d never heard of before. In addition to a small museum about the long history (since 1275 or so), and a little advertising, the price of admission included a cocktail and two tastes, all of your own choosing.

The Dutch aren’t famous for their cuisine, but being an international city you could find anything you wanted from Chinese to Italian to Thai to Sushi. We did make an effort to seek out the Dutch fast food you get out of slots in a wall, and tried the traditional bar food, bitterballen. Think of a deep-fried mashed-potato gravy ball. They were quite good. Besides the food we were back to more good beer. Amsterdam is famous for its Heineken and Amstel, but they also have a lot of Belgian beers that we were excited to see again. In addition to that, most places had the seasonal fall beer, Bok (or Bock). Too many choices! The Dutch have become known for their cheese and one look at the map will tell you that with cities like Edam, Munster, and Gouda they must know what they are doing. We’d tried to sample as much as we could.

We took a day trip to the city of Utrecht and saw a little of the flat, green countryside from the train. Utrecht’s train station is conveniently nestled in a mall, but that made it a little difficult for us to actually find our way out. Once we did, we found cute cobblestone streets, more canals, a farmers market, and a church that was damaged by a hurricane in 1674 and only partially restored. After shopping and snacking and sipping more beer we headed back to Amsterdam after dark.

One night we found an old movie theater and saw The American and on our last evening we treated ourselves to sushi and sake. We caught the tram in the rain back to Centraal Station where we got on a train for the airport. We had our last airport breakfast (woo hoo) and stood in line with a bunch of Canadians to board our plane where we are seated in the second to last row. After we land we’ll drive to Detroit. We found a car from Hertz about a month ago for only fifteen dollars! So we will make one more land border crossing before we visit the Wiktors of Detroit.