Sleeuwijk with Paulo
Monisha and Erik took us to Paulo’s house to spend a few days there. We spent the afternoon and evening together, and took a lovely walk around Sleeuwijk (SLAY-VIKE). Paulo showed us around the town, along the dike, and past the river. We brought Bibi along with us and she was very cute frolicking around through the grass and up to the water.
Everyone has been telling us that Paulo is quite the chef. He cooked us an Indian dinner that night that lived up to our high expectations. We had lamb curry, dahl, rice, salad and papadum. Along with these dishes was several kinds of sambal. Sambal is a popular spicy sauce in Holland that comes from Indonesia. Modern food in the Netherlands has Indonesian influences since there used to be a large Dutch colony there.
We’ve had lots of nice things to eat at their house: appelflap (an apple filled pastry), really good baklava (pistachio and walnut), pear chutney that they made from the pears on their tree (they let us take a jar with us as well, which we enjoyed at Arvind’s the next morning), etc.
For weeks the two of us have been looking forward to the following day’s activities: Spikeball!! Thomas and David enjoyed playing with us so much when they came to California that they bought a set for themselves. They played it every day with their friends on their vacation in France, so they were excited to take us on again. It’s quite impressive how good they are already. Nolan and I still came out with the win when we played on a team together ;) But it was so much fun. Afterwards we went to the tennis courts to play a couple matches; this was another thing we’ve been very much looking forward to. This time when Nolan and I played against David and Thomas is was a bit of an embarrassment for us! They’re very good, and Nolan and I are already less advanced, haven’t played in months, and have never played on the artificial turf surface they have here in Holland. So after a quick whipping, we switched up the teams and had a much more even match. Also a lot of fun, and good to get some sports in.
That afternoon we went to Rotterdam with Paulo, David, and Thomas. Rotterdam is the “Working City” of the Netherlands, while Amsterdam tends to be more for enjoyment. We took a Spido boat tour through the Rotterdam port, the second largest shipping port in the world. On the way, we passed an orange juice warehouse that holds 16 tanks, each holding 1000 metric tons (1000kg or 2,200 lbs for those of you using freedom units) of orange juice concentrate. Along the way, voices told us interesting facts about Rotterdam in four different languages. It’s a good thing that English was the second in the list. Oftentimes we have traveled far past the interesting landmark by the time they got to French.
After our tour we took a trip up to the top of the Euromast. This building used to be the tallest in Rotterdam, and its only purpose is to give people like us the best possible view of the city and surrounding area. It was pretty cloudy during most of our day in the city, but we got lucky with the weather (a common theme in our adventures so far) and saw plenty of sun during our trip up the tower. It was cool to see all the interesting architecture: two famous bridges, a row of cube houses, the nhow hotel. The tower also directly overlooks beautiful, pristinely maintained gardens.
The last Rotterdam attraction we went to was Markthal, a famous food market in a pretty cool building. Paulo reeled in Monisha’s wandering tendencies when exploring food markets, explaining that it’s better to take an intentional route through the stalls so you ensure you get to everything and go through it all efficiently. He was quite underwhelmed by the market; sure it wasn’t the most amazing food market in existence but it had lots of nice things, and it’s quite impossible for Monisha to have a bad time at a food market. We enjoyed fries with mayo, our first kibbeling (Dutch fried fish – it was really delicious), and some chocolates from Leonidas (one of Thomas’ favorite chocolate shops). The most enjoyable thing about it was just going through it with good company.
That evening Thomas and Paulo both had tennis matches for the neighborhood tennis tournament. Nolan and I watched the end of Paulo’s doubles match and then got to watch most of Thomas’ singles match after. The atmosphere was so neat; we both loved getting a taste of the local town culture. There were six or so matches going on and 20 or 30 neighbors watching the games while talking and having drinks together. Afterwards, everyone continued having drinks late into the night. At some point Paulo rang the bell to treat everyone at the place to a drink on him; he said it was to celebrate Thomas getting his driver’s license that day! We didn’t get back home until 2:30am… A wonderful evening / night indeed!
Paulo was again our tour guide the next day, bringing us to see more special and traditional Dutch things. The coolest thing of the day was seeing and going into a windmill. Nolan has never been inside one before and it’s been a long time since Monisha has. The inner workings are really incredible. This was a working windmill which wasn’t running while when were there, but the miller was there and talked to us for awhile about his profession. It reminded us of a Rube Goldberg machine; each gear turns other gears or activates multiple pulleys or levers that connect to more mechanisms, etc. The amount of power generated is also mindboggling.
He also took us to another cheese farm. This time we got a full tour of the facility. We learned about each step of the process: mixing in rennet (the curdling enzyme), pouring the curds into the containers, pressing them for about one and a half hours, dunking the wheels in a huge saltwater bath (that actually just looks like murky pondwater), and then wrapping them in wax and aging them. Because we couldn’t resist the house specialty, we bought yet another piece of cheese to add to our collection. Fortunately we’ve since started finally finishing off some of the first blocks we bought :P
Everyone has been telling us that Paulo is quite the chef. He cooked us an Indian dinner that night that lived up to our high expectations. We had lamb curry, dahl, rice, salad and papadum. Along with these dishes was several kinds of sambal. Sambal is a popular spicy sauce in Holland that comes from Indonesia. Modern food in the Netherlands has Indonesian influences since there used to be a large Dutch colony there.
That afternoon we went to Rotterdam with Paulo, David, and Thomas. Rotterdam is the “Working City” of the Netherlands, while Amsterdam tends to be more for enjoyment. We took a Spido boat tour through the Rotterdam port, the second largest shipping port in the world. On the way, we passed an orange juice warehouse that holds 16 tanks, each holding 1000 metric tons (1000kg or 2,200 lbs for those of you using freedom units) of orange juice concentrate. Along the way, voices told us interesting facts about Rotterdam in four different languages. It’s a good thing that English was the second in the list. Oftentimes we have traveled far past the interesting landmark by the time they got to French.
After our tour we took a trip up to the top of the Euromast. This building used to be the tallest in Rotterdam, and its only purpose is to give people like us the best possible view of the city and surrounding area. It was pretty cloudy during most of our day in the city, but we got lucky with the weather (a common theme in our adventures so far) and saw plenty of sun during our trip up the tower. It was cool to see all the interesting architecture: two famous bridges, a row of cube houses, the nhow hotel. The tower also directly overlooks beautiful, pristinely maintained gardens.
That evening Thomas and Paulo both had tennis matches for the neighborhood tennis tournament. Nolan and I watched the end of Paulo’s doubles match and then got to watch most of Thomas’ singles match after. The atmosphere was so neat; we both loved getting a taste of the local town culture. There were six or so matches going on and 20 or 30 neighbors watching the games while talking and having drinks together. Afterwards, everyone continued having drinks late into the night. At some point Paulo rang the bell to treat everyone at the place to a drink on him; he said it was to celebrate Thomas getting his driver’s license that day! We didn’t get back home until 2:30am… A wonderful evening / night indeed!
He also took us to another cheese farm. This time we got a full tour of the facility. We learned about each step of the process: mixing in rennet (the curdling enzyme), pouring the curds into the containers, pressing them for about one and a half hours, dunking the wheels in a huge saltwater bath (that actually just looks like murky pondwater), and then wrapping them in wax and aging them. Because we couldn’t resist the house specialty, we bought yet another piece of cheese to add to our collection. Fortunately we’ve since started finally finishing off some of the first blocks we bought :P
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