A busy day!

 We were up and about early on Friday morning as we were expecting a gas engineer to come and complete the annual gas boiler service. In these times of rising energy prices it’s important that our boiler is working safely and efficiently.  The engineer came nice and early and completed the service in about an hour. Everything is working well. 

We needed to do some shopping (again!) so took a walk to the Vomar supermarket. Outside was a lively open market which is there every Friday. There were all kinds of stalls: fish, fruit, cheese, meat, flowers, fruit, vegetables and more.  It was very popular and we bought some strawberries and bananas  - they were considerably cheaper than those from the supermarket. Then we returned home for lunch.

After lunch we had intended that I would do some more cycle training but we hit a small technical hitch.  I need to adjust the saddle so that at some point my feet can touch the ground.  We were provided with the tools and WD40 by our chief mechanic (Yolande) and managed to loosen the nut holding the saddle. But we could not move it so we sprayed WD 40 to loosen it. We will check on it later today. 

Since I was not biking my trainer (she still has her contract) decided we could walk one of the routes of the trip we intend to take when I am capable. So we walked part of the way to Zaanse Schans.  This is a popular place with tourists as there are big windmills there. 

  

I must point out that “Zaanse Schans” is almost impossible for an Englishman to pronounce correctly. Just like the rest of the world (and me) cannot say “Van Gogh” correctly.  But I keep trying and I hope one day my wonderful friends here will understand me. 

We did not walk the whole distance but came back home having completed over 10,000 steps for the day. 

A cold drink was well deserved and enjoyed.

In the evening Theo came to collect us and take us to his house in Zuid Oost Beemster for dinner. The journey there was very interesting - we travelled through polders and dikes.  Lots of water around in the flat countryside. Very green and beautiful with grazing farm animals. The land is what we in England would say is “flat as a pancake”. The Dutch equivalent is “plat als een dubbeltje”. A dubbeltje is a small coin. We also saw many beautiful old buildings with very distinctive Dutch features and colours. 

On arrival we met his wife Marijke and youngest son Amar.

Theo had produced a lovely meal of Dhaal and rice with cucumber relish and pineapple chutney. All prepared from scratch by his own fair hand. It was a delicious meal. I particularly liked the pineapple chutney.  I had ice cream for dessert.

We talked a lot about many different subjects over our convivial dinner. And then talked more over coffee before Theo drove us home. It’s seems my poor Dutch was not too much of an obstacle. 

It was a very pleasant evening and we both enjoyed ourselves very much. Thanks very much to Theo, Marijke and Amar.

I took a couple of pics but they are not too good thanks to my bad composition in the subdued lighting. 

Here they are anyway.

I must apologise to Marijke because such a lovely lady deserves to be in the spotlight - not hidden by it.

I promise to try better next time.

So that was our busy Friday. 

More news tomorrow.