From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Tour 1998 -- part 9 Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 16:48:17 EDT Dear Family and Friends, I'm not getting tired of this. I hope you aren't. There's some much going on, even after staying in the same town for a while. Hope you had a nice weekend. We did. Cheers, Rainer Friday, 10/2 It was noticeably colder today. The little Opel has a time/date/outside temperature reading that indicated 8 Celsius, that's about 45 Farenheit If you know that 0C is 32F and that each 10C is 18F then without much memorizing you'll soon know that 10C is 50F, 20C is 68F, 30C is 86F you can do a quick assessment of what the temperature is like) less than yesterday. None of us will be walkin' on the beach today barefoot! The skies been a nickel gray all day and breezy. Vera and I had the continental breakfast at the hotel again. Monika said she'd sleep in and we brought her back some juice, fruit, bread, and hard-boiled egg. She hadn't slept in, and was already dressed and on the laptop getting/sending email. Since it was so much colder all of a sudden, and since Monika had left her coat at her school farm, we agreed it was a nice time to go and buy a coat. La Galleria is next to the Kurhaus and has the latest clothes shops. Monika now has a very nice black leather jacket -- Visa's great, isn't it? The pier in the day still has lots of tourist shops open. Several more purchases of pins, stamps, table cloth, coffee mug, and, of course, which trip to Holland would be complete without them, wooden shoes size 38. Go well with the beret and the leather jacket. The plans changed again. Rather than birding, we'd tour Madurodam. Birding will be tomorrow. Honest. At the hotel we finished collecting stuff to send home and cut down a large cardboard box into a smaller one, filled it with the the broken camera, useless hair drier, and acquired treasures and sent them off the Portland. The Dutch post office, like the Dutch train station, has a number dispenser and a display that says which number is being served at which counter. It's actually quite efficient. We also bought stamps for post cards and stamps for collecting. The package should arrive in 4-5 weeks -- probably after we do. Then to Madurodam. Some say that you don't have to travel in Holland at all, just see Madurodam and you'll see it all. Don't believe them. Madurodam is a model railroader's dream, but large scale and with more than just railroads. Lots of famous parts of Holland are represented here and the detail is quite elaborate. Vera and Monika liked it a lot more than I did. It was interesting and the pictures will tell more. We found out about the parking. Friday, starting at 1300 until 2200 you have to pay to park on the street. Also on Saturdays and Sundays. The problem is, the meters that on the street in front of the hotel, the maximum stay you're allowed to park is only for an hour! What lunacy! So, on our return from Madurodam, I parked the car in a nearby parking structure where you pay 3 guilders per hour. I'll have to move the car out after the meters stop until tomorrow at 1300 again. You'd think that the hotels would have a permit or something. We got back to the hotel about 1600. Everyone did some of their own stuff again. Vera grew restless after a while and was eager to go walk on the beach again. Monika joined her. I stayed here and fiddled with the online photos -- getting them all turned the right way, and captioned the first two parts of the photo album. That takes a lot longer than I'd planned. But it was fun. The family returned around 1900 and dinner plans were made to go to Applebee's. It was very busy there, and the service sucked. Food was okay. We walked over to the parking structure, paid the 17 guilders at the machine to get the car out, and drove around a couple of blocks to find a place to park for free for the night. Called my cousin in Berlin to let him know the change of plans and to get the name of a hotel hear the train station for when we arrive Monday night. He didn't seem thrilled about the change. Also called home to check voice messaging. There were 11 messages, only 2 of which actually said anything, and neither of those was meaningful.