{"id":470,"date":"2008-09-14T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-14T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/a-day-off-in-the-nederlands\/"},"modified":"2014-07-06T14:59:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-06T14:59:16","slug":"a-day-off-in-the-nederlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/a-day-off-in-the-nederlands\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day Off in The Nederlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once at the hotel, I had to decide whether I\u2019d be going to sleep or if I\u2019d be getting dressed and heading out to spend the day with Persephone, one of my dearest friends\u2026we\u2019ve been great friends since college. I chose the latter. I always enjoy spending time with Persephone, and try to whenever I\u2019m in this part of the world. Persephone met me at the hotel and we traveled to Gouda via train. What a quaint little town! It\u2019s simply beautiful and scenic. As it happens, this weekend is Open Monument weekend, so we were able to visit several buildings, each hundreds of years old, for free!
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The most incredible of the buildings was the Sint Janskerk Church<\/a>. The church is filled with dozens of gorgeous stained glass windows. The colors in the windows are breathtaking and mesmerizing. I couldn\u2019t stop staring at them.<\/p>\n

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After visiting the monuments, and a quick stroll through the shopping district, Persephone\u2019s husband, father-in-law and I all went to a Gouda Culinary Festival. The food was tasty, but the service aspect of the festival didn\u2019t function very well. First of all, visitors were compelled to sit at tables and place orders with overwhelmed wait staff, which made for very long delays before getting any food. At most festivals in the USA, visitors are invited to form a queue in front of whichever booth or booths appeal to their palate, pay for a plate of food, and either walk around with their food, or find a table. That way, waiting extended periods of time for food isn\u2019t an issue. The competition for seating at the Gouda festival was intense! As soon as someone stood up from a table, someone was there waiting to take over their seats. Once seated, people tended to linger in their seats, even after finishing their food, despite the teeny, tiny portions.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the event was fun, except for the prevalence of chain smoking, nicotine addicts all around us. The number of people carelessly and casually smoking amidst the diners was overwhelming. As I was attempting to enjoy a delicious plate of grilled scallops, the woman at the next table held and occasionally took a drag on cigarette, after cigarette, after cigarette, sending her noxious plumes directly towards our table, causing me to nearly gag. We Californians, with our decades of laws directed towards protecting the non-smoker, are simply not accustomed to how oblivious some smokers remain about their habit. I can\u2019t imagine being so addicted to any substance. I could barely taste my food over the stench of the various cigarettes in the environment. However, I\u2019m not in California, so I didn\u2019t raise a fuss. I certainly didn\u2019t want to offend the woman. Besides, perhaps oblivious smoking is simply part of the culture, and had she realized how horrible her smoking was making me feel she would have ceased. Ah well\u2026c\u2019est la vie. At least smokers aren\u2019t allowed to smoke indoors at restaurants anymore in Holland. That\u2019s a huge plus! I\u2019ll be a bit more observant before choosing seating in an outdoor dining situation again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once at the hotel, I had to decide whether I\u2019d be going to sleep or if I\u2019d be getting dressed and heading out to spend the day with Persephone, one of my dearest friends\u2026we\u2019ve been great friends since college. I chose the latter. I always enjoy spending time with Persephone, and try to whenever I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}