Today is a busy day. First stop: Mugge Farm.
We ate breakfast at the hotel and left around 10am, making the short drive to the Mugge farm. As with the Galm farm, we arrived unnanounced; although in this case we had the advantage of an exact address. We met Ingletora and Gert, who spoke little to no English, but thanks to our practice with the Galm farm, and a better smartphone app, we had less of a language barrier:
We talked for over half an hour, and very graciously received a brief explanation of their daily routine. We were then told we could freely explore on our own, but Gert had not yet had his morning coffee, so he needed to go inside and get that, then start his work day.
After our visit to the farm we made a brief stop in Bruchhausen-Vilsen for some souvenirs. We also took a trip to the cemetery to look for some Mugge headstones.
And then more driving. Our final destination for the day was Amsterdam, and we wanted to stop to mail off more of the crap (*ahem* souvenirs and items we overpacked) before moving further along in our trip. We stopped in Osnabruck and found a postal center. It was lunchtime, and we were hungry.
But if Munich had taught us anything, it was to check what time the rental car place closed. We had to make it to Amsterdam by 6pm in order to return our rental cars on time. By the time we finished mailing our items, it was already after 2, and we had at least another 3 hours to go.
So, we ended up getting some pizzas to go at one of the fanciest Pizza Huts I've ever been in:
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| There were vases of fresh flowers on the tables |
And then we were on the Autobahn. Chris was driving one car, and Nick the other. Since there are no speed limits on many parts of the autobahn they were not technically speeding. Although several of their passengers may have been hanging on for dear life.
Good news: we made it to Hertz in time.
And who did we meet, but the rental agent from Munich! They had flown him out there to pick up our car and drive it back. He was actually very excited about this, since he was Dutch and was planning to visit family in the Netherlands for the brief time he was there.
After unloading our luggage, dropping off the cars, and successfully (although barely) avoiding getting run over by the multitude of bicycle traffic, we caught a bus to our hotel.
We had two nights booked in Amsterdam, and the first was, by mutual agreement, segregated by gender. The gentlemen were going out for a "boys' night" and the ladies for a "girls' night."
The "boys" met at some fancy steakhouse on the water:
I'm not entirely sure what they did for the remainder of the night, but it did involve the red light district and some place called the "banana bar."
Us girls met at this great cafe/restaurant with tables right next to the canal. We then took a cab to the red light district and wandered around looking at the "interesting" sights. We had some cocktails at the Grasshopper, and occasional drinks at some of the outdoor patios in the red light.
To make a long story short, both the gentlemen and the ladies had an enjoyable evening in Amsterdam, and made it back to their respective hotel rooms before the dawn of the following day.
The rest... well it stays in Amsterdam.
CONVERSATION