Monday, March 11, 2024
This morning we woke up early, packed up our bags, and said goodbye to our new friends Grant and Emma. Our stay in London has been so amazing, but it’s time to move on. We are so grateful for Grant and Emma for letting us stay here.
We took the train from London to Utrecht, Holland, where we will be staying with a friend of my brother Spencer. Her name is Veroniek, and Spencer helped teach her the gospel when he was a missionary here. Veroniek actually spent quite some time in the States, and she and I met when I was in high school. Since then she’s been a good friend of our family. She and her two sons are really great, and we already love them.
Our train to Utrecht Centraal got us here a bit late, but we made it.
It was good to just have the afternoon free to just hang out at the house and relax. Betty and I also went to the grocery store with Veroniek. Betty loved just looking around at all of the things. You can learn a lot about a place by looking at their grocery stores. It’s interesting to me because in many ways every European grocery store looks the same, but they are all also unique to their countries. For example, the Dutch store had a million different things to make a sandwich with. Cheeses, sauces, meats, breads. They are very creative. They also have a bunch of candy -- and a bunch of it is black licorice flavored :( Betty loved that they had lots of fresh foods. The packaging of everything was also really small.
For dinner we had a traditional Dutch meal, where they put a grill on the table and each person grills up their own little pieces of meat to eat. There was a variety of dipping sauces and some little individual pans in which we could make our own little pancakes or omelettes. Apparently it’s a common dinner at Christmas time.
Our plan is to visit Amsterdam tomorrow.