Today didn't go exactly as planned either. I went to Groningen in northern Holland today. Excalibur, the world's tallest climbing wall is there! I had already decided before coming to Holland that I was going to try climbing it; I mean, you can't find another one like this anywhere in the whole wide world . So I rode the train, found a break in the drizzly weather, marched right up to the climbing wall and was told you can't climb there without a partner. So disappointment aside, I guess I will just need to come back to Holland someday.

Today started dark and early with setting up one of Antony's markets. Then I went to Schiphol Airport for a bus tour and it was running today! I thought it was pretty cool. We didn't get to leave the bus but they had a video presentation running as well as the bus driver giving info on the various parts of the airport "city." Tonight Antony and I met with his pastor for some conversation as well as some drinks and cheese and dried meat. I couldn't help but think of the song "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." We didn't have bourbon but had about everything else: Texels beer, rye, gentleman jack, and blue label something or other. It was, well, you know the cheese was really good!

 The busy highway travels directly under the airplanes

 So much alcohol

 I thought this was cool, was just driving along, looked UP and saw a boat. Welcome to the lowlands.

 Firefighters training

The City of Schiphol

This morning was kinda wet and chilly, a good time to read a book. This afternoon though I went off to the city again. I visited Micropia which is a museum/zoo of microorganisms. I thought it was kinda cool. Not much else to say, just making plans for my last week here.

 Tardigrades/waterbears! The indestructible unknown wonders.

 Glowing microbes

 Cool ant farm

Today didn't go quite how I had planned but that's okay. I headed over to Schiphol Airport this morning for a behind the scenes tour. I'm hoping to figure out what I'm going to do with my life in this next year and aviation is one of many careers I've considered so I thought this would be perfect! Except when I got there they told me no tours were being held today. So I spent the rest of the day getting lost in the forest since it was really nice out. Tomorrow hail is in the forecast so we'll see what Antony and I find to do.

Sorry, not many pictures today; I was dumb and let my phone die. I had some cool opportunities in the forest though! Saw a Saint Bernard-like dog that was Holstein patterned. And the cute hairy Scottish Highlanders were posing nicely. Also biked along the Olympic rowing canal.

I am very sick of beer. We went to the Heineken Experience today since it is supposed to be a really cool thing that tourists should do in Amsterdam. The experience part was very impressive. The Heineken part was rather disappointing after the Texels beer. Not too much happened other than that today. We just came back home, watched a documentary, read a book and were all around kinda lazy.

 These bottles were pretty cool, they changed design in purple light though it's kinda hard to see in the picture.

 This is the old brewing room. This facility when could produce 300,000 bottles per month. The new facility produces 700,000 bottles per hour.

Well, I am officially a strong supporter of continuing to sing the old, well-known Psalms and hymns. I went to Uncle Pete's/Antony's/Jack's church today which was in Dutch, but I was amazed by how many of the melodies I recognized. There was also a singing night at their church tonight, and I was able to sing along in English with a few of the songs. We sang Amazing Grace in English. Let's see... what other songs... Ten thousand reasons, Psalm 23, Shout to the Lord, I Sought the Lord and Afterward I Knew, a "thi's" song sung in both Dutch and English, I recognized the tunes of about all the Genevan songs... And I don't remember the names of the other ones. But that was really cool! We are separated by language and distance and everything, but yet we have a common bond through the songs we sing in worship.

We hopped over to the island Texel today. We took our bikes across on the ferry and ended up biking through most of the southern half of the island. The whole western coast is a national park full of dunes and trees which was quite pretty. Antony really likes Texels beer so we toured their brewery and got samples of the beer. I've never really drank before coming here and I can't say it's my favorite beverage but that's okay. According to Antony, Texels beer is quite exceptional. I did notice their alcohol percentage is rather high, it was between 5 and 10% for each different type of beer. The ride up the island was really nice, the ride down... Not so much. It was VERY windy and rainy. The GPS calculated our route would take 23 minutes but it took us just over an hour instead. But we made it!

 It smelled and looked like these sheep were eating onions

 Oh I forgot to put this part of the day into the blog. We missed our ferry- we pulled up just as it was pulling out- so we had an hour to kill in Den Helder. There was a Navy Museum which was closed but they had all these outside to look at.
Above is a memorial.

 The bridge

 Rear of the aubmarine

 Front of the submarine

 Three different types of windmills

This roof was tile with straw, I thought it looked kinda cool