Edam, Holland - Night 1

Rainbows. I looked at the ground as we approached the airport and saw rainbows right there on the ground among the canals and the windmills in that almost mythical place known as Holland. It was somewhat confusing at first before I remembered the tulips. I had been to the Netherlands before, even in the spring, but we stayed in the main cities and I had forgotten that once I had wanted to see them, had considered the experience a bucket list item before "bucket list" was a cliche, and it wasn't until that moment when we were directly above them, above the rainbows in the ground, that the idea to see them returned to my mind.

That was last spring, when we were flying into Schipol Airport from Spain en route to Washington. Chris was asleep and he missed it all, even though I grabbed his shoulders and tried to wake him to look. In hindsight he was already sick during that trip. I mistook it for disinterest.

I had been to Amsterdam a couple of times before, and though we had planned to stay there, the only time we ended up spending there was as a transportation hub to other parts of the country. By the time I got around to making hotel reservations for this portion of our trip, all of the budget hotels in Amsterdam had been reserved, so I had to look elsewhere. Here is what I found:

Edam is a small town of 7,000 people famous for its cheese. (You will find it in your local supermarket next to the Gouda, another town in Netherlands.) It's easily accessible by bus from Amsterdam so we had no problem commuting to the places we wanted to go, namely Keukenhof Gardens. We had planned to spend some time in Amsterdam but as soon as we got off the bus we fell in love with the town and spent more time there talking to people who lived there and looking around, despite the wintry temperatures.

Here is our hotel. Stay here. Do it.

On our first night, we ate a three course meal at the hotel, not caring that we were paying as much for dinner as a night in the hotel. It was our one big meal of the trip, and it was worth it. As there are not many restaurants in the town, it was packed (more people arrived after the pic below was taken, and there was a larger room to the right), so the place was lively and it was a fun atmosphere.

We splurged on dinner our first night.

We stayed for a couple of hours before walking off our food and then turning in, as the whole point of our trip was happening in the morning.

To be continued...