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We went to Broodje Bert's for breakfast because their breakfast was large, and
we had a long drive ahead of us and wanted to get as far as possible before we had to stop for food. We had a little free time before we had
to start walking over to the Sunhead to checkout, so we took the oppportunity to take some pictures we had neglected to take earlier in the week.
We took a picture of
the Singel Canal from just outside our
apartment. Also, all over Amsterdam there are
posts, with three Xs aligned vertically on them, that are used to separate the bike/pedestrian paths from the roads. We had also seen this
pattern of Xs on other things.
It looked like it was used as a symbol for the city, and according to two fairly believable looking web
sites it stands for the three hardships of Amsterdam, "Fires, Floods, & Plagues".
We also had not had the opportunity to take pictures of the
open air urinals on the side of the road that we had often seen in Amsterdam, because they always seemed like they had someone in them.
After breakfast we walked to the Sunhead, and took a taxi from there to Overtoom 333 where we were picking up our rental car. The
people at the car rental office spoke great English, and we had no
trouble getting the car. Only a few kilometers down Overtoom there was an entrance onto the highway. We got
on the highway and continued south toward Germany. On the way to Germany we drove over the Martinus Nijhoff Bridge. A couple hours later
we crossed the border into Germany.
Often, we had to make turns that were not obvious to us, and we got lost a few times. This is one of many churches we passed by while driving through the many small German towns on our route.
Fortunately, we got to Gemunder Ferienwohnpark
only about 30 minutes later than we expected. We arrived at the RCI resort
and found the front office. We asked, "Sprechen sie English?" to the woman behind the front desk, and she told us to "relax", and that she spoke
English. She gave us our keys and showed us around. We went to our room and made some calls back to the U.S. After getting off the phone we realized
the supermarket in town closed in only 30 minutes (4:30 on a Saturday!), and it wasn't open at all the next day.
We hurried to the store and bought
food and various sundries. After purchasing our groceries, we realized they had
not bagged them, and in fact, there were no grocery bags to be seen. Other people we had seen had bought few enough groceries that they
didn't need a bag to carry them out. We said, "Entschuldigen Sie" to the cashier, but she didn't hear us.
The next customer noticed, and said, "Hallo" to the cashier, directing her attention towards us. We tried to gesture to indicate
we needed a bag, and the cashier said something to us, which we finally realized was "zehn cents". We fished out .10 EUR, got our
bag, and went back to the resort. For dinner we had crackers and cheese and an apple and mussels along with some white wine.
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