Day 2, Monday April 15th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:

Day 2 (Monday April 15) was mostly spent exploring the rural area north of Amsterdam. I’m super basic and REALLY wanted to see tulip fields, which amused Anita to no end since they’re so normal there – like seeing corn or soy fields is to me. But we saw them and they were gorgeous! Even with the horrible weather.

We really enjoyed getting a tour of where Anita grew up, seeing her home, and checking out Dutch grocery stores and shopping areas. It was as such a special treat to get the “local” experience! And so so wonderful to meet Anita in person. She’s amazing. My heart is so happy 🥹

We had dinner with another rock painter then went to drinks with a bunch of rock painters. It meant so much to me that so many of them traveled to see me 🥹 Such a wonderful group of people. I could have chatted for hours!

Monday was such a special day! We took the train from Amsterdam to Hoorn and Anita showed us what life is like for the Dutch outside of the big city! But first…

MORNING RUN

I was really excited to take a break from lifting and running so much while in Europe, but I still did have a goal to run in each country (spoiler, I did!). Monday morning was my only chance to run in the Netherlands since we had such an early wakeup call on Tuesday (I will whine about that below and in the Tuesday post) so I was out the door at 6:04 am.

And it was MAGICAL to have the city all to myself! I was the only one out, besides a few street cleaners. There was no pedestrian and hardly any car traffic. I ran from our hotel to Westerpark and back.

Ha, I brought ONE running outfit for this trip and wore it THREE times without washing it. Pee-ew!

BREAKFAST!

We took the tram to Amsterdam Centraal and I got my first Starbucks mugs of the trip. When we travel we get a magnet and the Starbucks mug if the location has one. I was very excited to see a tulip on the Netherlands mug!

We took the commuter train to Hoorn. We used our credit cards again – we tapped them on the turnstile to get to the platform, rode our train (a conductor scanned our cards to make sure we paid), then we tapped them again on the turnstile to exit in Hoorn. Nice and easy!

We enjoyed seeing the Netherlands countryside from the train and talked a lot about the kinds of houses we were seeing, the animals, and agriculture. You know, boring things adults are interested in.

Anita picked us up and we went to Bagels and Beans for breakfast. I got a chai and Tex Mex bagel (with pinto bean spread, avocado, melted ‘cheddar’, nacho chips & tomato salsa) and Steven got a coffee and Thai “Chicken” Chili bagel (with Thai sweet chili cream ‘cheese’,‘chicken’, serundeng & cucumber).

Everything was delicious! Steven said that was the best coffee he had on the whole trip. He tried a lot of different coffees (and I tried a lot of chais!) but later in the trip, most of the coffees he ordered were made from a machine, as in the barista just pressed a button and it made it (like a fancy gas station coffee machine). So none of the coffee he tried was really remarkable. Anyway.

THE MOTHERF*CKING TULIPS!

After breakfast Anita showed us around Hoorn, where she grew up (I will forever be enchanted by little European villages), then we went to see tulip fields that she passes all the time as she drives around.

They were gorgeous! I was so excited!

The farmers had already started trimming the heads off (they grow these for the bulbs, not the flowers! Mind blown!) and later in the week they were all trimmed off so our timing was perfect.

Originally, when I was working with our travel agent, we had planned to go to Keukenhof, a large garden south of Amsterdam, to see the tulips. But as I was talking to Anita about it, and she was telling me how that would take up most of the day and those would be more planned out gardens then seeing how the tulips grow, we decided to see them in the fields by her house instead. We didn’t even go to an official touristy place! We just pulled over on the side of the road. It was perfect. Steven said he liked that much better than spending all day in a garden (which likely would have been really crowded).

(There is a funny to me and Anita only inside story about her asking me what I wanted to do that Monday in the Netherlands and me saying “I wanna see the motherf*cking tulips!” then it kind of became our mantra for the trip, and we could not say tulips without the word MFing in front of it. Anita gave me the tulip legos, I gave her a tulip rock (scroll through to the third photo, ha). Yeah. Good memories from planning. Anita was so helpful, and amazing that she planned this whole day for us and took off work and drove us around! It was really special to see what living in the Netherlands is like for her.)

ZWAAG

Next we went to Anita’s house in Zwaag. How cool is it that she has a canal right behind her house?! Like, her garden (aka yard) opens up to this and they have a little boat! The Netherlands are so cool. We enjoyed hearing what Anita and Mike could remember about how the country was built up, like how the dams around Markermeer lake were built in the late 70s.

Because we are SUPER cool we went to a bakery to get some Hoornse Broeder (sweet bread that is traditionally given to women who just had a baby – Anita thought it would be fun for us to try something traditional to her area) to try, then to a grocery store to check out the fake meats, cheese, coffee, and candy sections. We didn’t buy anything because Anita had bought so many wonderful vegan treats for us to snack on in the car (which I sure did!). I wish I could tell you what they are… but I ate them all and did not take photos! (I do remember jodenkoek (sugar cookies) and black licorice!)

ZAANSE SCHANS

Zaanse Schans is a beautiful area north of Amsterdam with working windmills, handicraft shops, and museums, and would have been amazing to spend more time at had it not been pouring rain on and off. Ha! We made the best of it!

We saw clogs being made,

got to go inside a windmill,

and checked out some cool shops! I really enjoyed it, despite the rain and there being so many people (also, despite the rain… I cannot imagine what it would be like if the weather was nice!).

I had made a windmill rock and hid it there! (I made a few specific rocks to hide in Europe)

BURGER KING

Before this trip, I told Steven if we saw a Burger King with the vegan chicken patty I was going to try it because that is what I got when I ate meat in the 1900s (ha ha ha, so funny to say it like that).

AND GUESS WHAT? We passed one on the way to Zaanse Schans! I was so excited to try it. It blows my mind that fast food in Europe has so many more vegan options than in the USA. Come on, USA. Get it together.

It was good! Needed some vegan mayo, but good otherwise!

CHILL AFTERNOON

After lunch we made our way to Zaandam to park the car and take the train into Amsterdam. We had a bit of time so we went to a few shops in Zaandam then sat down for coffee, and writing postcards (I wanted to send my snister’s kids a postcard from each country!), and chatting. I really enjoyed that on this trip – stopping a lot to sit down and drink or eat something and just chat. There was always so much to chat about – what we were doing, cultural questions, more “get to know you” and sharing questions. I’m really grateful for this time together and glad it wasn’t all GO GO GO.

DINNER AT VEGAN JUNK FOOD BAR

We took the train into Amsterdam, then took a tram and met another rock painter, Petra, for dinner at Vegan Junk Food Bar. Petra’s husband and two daughters dropped her off, so I got to meet the whole family, which was lovely! (She said her kids really wanted to meet me! A few people have told me this about their kids and I don’t know what they are telling them about me, but that is very sweet and I’m honored that kids think I’m cool. (I’m not, but shh – maybe they can just sense I am a big kid))

Sumo Platter: Fly Wingz, Flamboyant Shrimpz, Kalamariz, Pnut Thai Chik’n & Classic Betterballs, Smiley Fries, Vegan Junkstar™ sauces, VJFB™ Heppi Rib, and Kapsalon loaded fries

The food was decent! I kept eating the “onion rings” in the platter thinking they were onion rings, when in fact, they were fake calamari. Ew. No. Fake fish is NOT for me (okay, except the Gardein fish that does not taste like fish.) My loaded fries were delish.

We had a nice conversation and it was fun to get focused time with Petra because it was difficult to have much conversation at our next event, which was with several artists!

Petra, me, and Anita! Steven took this photo after dinner then went back to the hotel and chilled.

DRINKS AT CAFE IN DE WAAG

There are a TON of rock painters in the Netherlands. A freaking ton! When I knew I was going to the Netherlands for sure I told Anita I’d like to reach out to folks and see who wanted to get together for drinks. She helped me pick a place and handled the reservation, and I handled reaching out to everyone. I contacted 30+ people (and still missed several, not on purpose), and at first 16 could come, then it got down to 8, which was much more manageable for conversation anyway!

Everyone was so nice and sweet to me, saying things like “I can’t believe you’re here!” and all giving me gifts. I brought the rocks below to give to everyone:

And here is photo of some (not all!!!) of the rocks I received (from my entire trip).

One person knew I was celebrating my 40th early and had a whole birthday package for me! Some people could not make the meetup but sent stuff with others to give to me. People are just too kind.

Birthday gift from Eva

Everyone was lovely and I connected with each person about something that I wish we could have chatted about for much longer! We met at 7:30 (I didn’t know what to order and ended up ordering a hot wine type thing which was perfect for how cold it was) and we were there until 9:30.  I’m so glad I was able to meet all these folks whose art I’ve been following online for years in person.

@happystonesbno, @mayoart5, @rockingstoneseva, @you.rock.wageningen, @happystones_netherlands, @casmah, & @happystone118

THAT’S A WRAP!

Anita and Bianca walked me halfway to my hotel, then I walked the rest of the way back (with Live Location turned on in WhatsApp with Anita and checking in when I got there – so sweet of her to ask me to!). It was kind of an unceremonious goodbye to Anita, but before the trip I had asked if she wanted to spend our last day of the trip with us in Bruges and she told me that night that she’d try to figure it out so I was hoping I’d see her again.

I did my first round of repacking our bag that night. I brought so many gifts with us and kept hoping our suitcase would get lighter but it never did because… drumroll… people were giving me rocks. Which weigh a lot. Ha.

I went to bed close to midnight and we had a stupid 4:30 am wakeup call to get to the airport. Wah!

CELLULAR SERVICE

Talking about using live location in WhatsApp reminded me to mention – we have Verizon and paid $100 per line to have data, calling, and texting while in Europe for up to a month. It worked well a lot of the time, except, you know, when Steven was driving and his Maps app wouldn’t load despite him downloading the google maps to have offline. Sigh.

(Steven and I are planners with a lot of things, and getting cell service in Europe was one of them. A month+ out from the trip he used the trip planner on Verizon to schedule our out of country cell service, putting in the days of the trip and everything, and since Verizon is amazing (sarcasm) they ignored the dates and activated it immediately, and it was actually going to expire right after our trip started. Then it was a pain to get someone on the phone to fix it. So he canceled it and filled out the form closer to the trip (it did the same thing – asked for dates and ignored them, but at least then we were within a month window) and that worked.)