January 3, 2010 - Rotterdam is a no-go...Utrecht, here we come!

Today was nice because we got up late because there we had no concrete plans.  The thing that sucked is that I was not feeling well at all at this point.  My sore throat was worse and I was congested.  At this point, I was ticked off because I had done everything to try and prevent this…including a flu shot that left my arm beat up.  Luckily, I had packed every over the counter drug known to mankind, so I was set!

This is our only completely free day…..the original plan was to go to Rotterdam but because of the weather, we scrapped that idea.  We were supposed to meet Justin, our cousin, in Rotterdam and he was going to give us a tour.  I had messaged him last night to tell him that we didn’t think traveling into Rotterdam was a safe idea anymore.  Marsha talked to him today and he gave another option of taking the train into Utrecht where there was shopping and sightseeing as well.  We decided to do this so that we could hang out with Justin a bit more and then see something different.  Since we had problems in the past with using our Visa debit card, Ed looked online to see how to use it at the train station so that we wouldn’t get stuck.  Well, we went to the train station in t’Harde and it didn’t take our card or paper money or coins.  So, we just drove to Utrecht and met Justin there.  It turns out that he wasn’t feeling well either and ended up taking us to see where our other cousin, Reza worked and then leaving to go home.  We walked around Utrecht and saw a really awesome church and went in a few stores.  We ate at café inside a department store and walked around more and took pictures.  Here are some pictures of Utrecht:

What would a day be without some sort of food.  This is the best kind:

The stores close at 5pm, so we headed back to the parking garage.  This was equivalent to a shopping mall and we had to pay for parking.  We really missed our free parking at home at this point.

We ran into Reza on the way out and said goodbye to him and then headed back to Elburg.

We met up with the rest of the family at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant in t’Harde and had dinner as a big group one last time.  The food was interesting…..I decided to have some kip (chicken) because it is easily recognizable and I know that word in Dutch. 

We headed home and did the usual:  checked in on the internet.  We added some laundry into the mix and then headed to bed.  I was in a cold drug induced state by this point.  I am hoping I fight this off because traveling with this crap will not be fun.