Travel

Traveling to strange places was not something I had much chance to do. Growing up I visited California a couple times, once by train on the El Capitan; the other time by car with Mom, brother Bob and his wife Inez and their adorable blonde haired, blue-eyed 18 month old son. We did drive across the border into Tia Juana once.

One of the responsibilities of my job at LeFebure was arranging travel for some of the sales and service guys. The travel agency I worked with offered my boss or his V.P. a familiarization tour of Amsterdam. Both men turned it down so the agency offered the trip to me. My only expense would be $200. What a deal!

The trip was over a long weekend. We rode in a bus from Cedar Rapids to Chicago O'Hare. We left there at 7 p.m. and arrived in Amsterdam at 7 a.m. the next morning. We did not go to bed until that evening so we were up 24 hours.

We visited the flower auction - just like an estate auction only with flower buyers. There were tulips in nearly every color and other flowers, too. The building where the auction took place was huge.

We stayed at the Sonesta Hotel. It was rated a five star hotel. Very amazing place to stay. It was connected to a health club by a tunnel. More about the health club later.

We visited Rembrandt's museum and saw his painting, "Night Watch." It was behind a plexiglass shield with a guard standing by because some nut had slashed it previously. It had been repaired, however.

We took a ride on the canal. The tall, skinny houses that lined the canal were built in the 1500s. Amazing.

We ate a buffet lunch Sunday at the Kerrhaus on the Black Sea. I ate cavier and fried squid (the latter tasted like rubber). Loved the cavier, however.

We stopped at a working cheese factory powered by a windmill. I bought a wheel of cheese to bring home. The Dutch keep the best cheese and export the rest. Yummy stuff!

We also visited the Von Moppes diamond factory. No one was working except the sales staff because it was Saturday. I bought a small gold wooden shoe replica with small chip diamonds across the top of it.

We toured the "red light" district. Prostitution is legal there. It was very strange. The women were dressed in their white bras and panties, standing in a "room" about the size of a small closet. The front was a window and they used black light. It was a bit embarrassing to this small town girl.

We tried different cuisines while we were there. One was Thai, I believe. It was very spicy and not to my taste but intereting to sample.

Back to the health club: After riding on the canal and looking up at those tall skinny buildings the first day, my neck was very stiff. I called the health club and made an appointment to have a massage. Boy, was I surprised when the massage therapist walked in! It was a guy who was studying sports medicine. They had given me a small towel. When he said, "Okay, lady you can drop the towel," I figured oh what the heck, I'll never see him again.

That evening in the hotel, we were waiting for the full contingent to come down to go out to dinner and who should come in but that same young man. He nodded to me politely and said, "Good evening, lady." This story has given us lots of laughs over the years!