July 6

July 6, 2006

Haalem 1

We made it to Amsterdam just fine and met a lady on the train heading to the airport. She was flying to Tanzania with a summer volunteer group, Global something.... Rob checked on his plane ticket out of here but found out he has to fly to Dublin. He was hoping to just catch the flight here as it stops in Amsterdam anyways. That was a NO GO. Oh well.

We made our way to Haarlem where we had booked a room. This is a nice little place just outside of Amsterdam. Our hotel is right on the edge of the city square. We dropped our luggage off and headed to a few of our favorite stores here. We gathered items for dinner; olive oil, balsamic vinegar, spice, bread, olives, salami, potato salad, berry drinkable yogurt and Pepsi Light. We proceeded to seek out a place to have our picnic by the canal. Rob mixed the oil, vinegar and spice just right to dip the bread in.... mama mia was that tasty! The potato salad was superb also. It was a lovely picnic indeed!

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Because the hotel has free wireless connection, we decided to go back to the room right away and make sure we have everything updated, backed up, charged up, etc. ready for Rob to depart from us tomorrow. Our good friend Karen McNeil will be meeting the three of us ladies at the airport in England. We met Karen in Guiyang, China and her daughter, Rebeka, is the girls' age and she spent some time with us in Beijing also. We are all looking forward to the little reunion for a few days.

Rob flies to Denver for a convention, but will be greeted by his parents while there also.

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