Mitzi fast asleep. Everyone was tired today after our journey yesterday.

One of the Citroens I like to call "duck-mobiles".

Beautiful flowers in Gouda, Netherlands.

Inside the old town-hall, the beams were fastened together with these pins.

It was market day, and this was the fish stall.

They had these little almost like mini pancakes that they covered with butter and powdered sugar. They were nummy.

We watched this guy carve wodden Dutch shoes from blocks of wood.

Some of the boys and men were dressed in traditional costumes.

Inside the old cheese weighing house, it's now a tourist office.

But they still have a couple of the scales and you can have yourself weighed and given a certificate.

On the outside of the building there's and old depiction of the cheese weighing.

The men and boys looked pretty neat in their costumes.

I'm glad Kindra and I made the effort to go to Gouda as seeing the market, the costumes, and the cheese was pretty neat.

Some of the people and cheese at the market.

Kindra at the market in Gouda.

The old town hall in Gouda is fantastic.

7-29-10 Thursday Today everyone was pretty tired after our long trip to the Netherlands yesterday going from England to France to Belgium and finally to the Netherlands. Wow. 4 different countries in one day. After getting up a little late, we met some of the people who worked at the house we were staying at. The house we are staying at, we did an exchange with a Dutch family who is staying at our house. They are LDS and the mom is American who served a mission in the Netherlands, then came back after her mission and met her husband who is Dutch. They have 4 boys and are staying in the US for a few weeks. They have a home office on the main floor of their home that has 4 floors. Too many different floors for me, but it works fine for us for a few days. The basement that is really the ground floor going out the back, has a kitchen and bathroom. The main floor has a bathroom, a guest bedroom, and a home office that some other people who are LDS work at, the next floor has a large family room and the main bathroom, then the upstairs has 3 bedrooms. If I get hungry or need a drink in the middle of the night, I have to go down 3 flights of stairs, get a drink, then go back up 3 flights of stairs. The 2 people who worked at the house told us that they have a town market in Gouda (only about 5 miles away) on Thursday’s, but it only goes until about 1pm. We tried to get the kids moving, but it was no use, so Kindra and I went to the market. I’m really glad we did. It was really neat. They had a bunch of stalls with food, clothes, etc. In one of them they were selling dutch wooden shoes and there was a guy making them from scratch and you could watch him make them the traditional way. They also had a weith/house that was now a cheese museum and souvenir shop. You can go in and they have this big scale they used to weight the cheese wheels on. You can get weighed on the scales and get a certificate. Lots of kids were doing that and it was pretty neat. You could also guess the weight of a wheel of cheese and at the end of the market the one who guessed closest got the wheel of cheese. They had some younger and older men and girls dressed in traditional Dutch clothing and had lots of wheels of cheese out. They were throwing the wheels back and forth and into the wagons, and it reminded me of when they throw the salmon at Pikes Place market in Seattle. We also got to try stroopwaffles. Whey they don’t have these in the US, I don’t know. I swear they must have some type of addicting drug in them, because they are seriously addicting. They are a type of cookie that they then put like carmel in between these 2 mini hard thin cookie like waffles. Way good. They also had these sardine like fish that were about 6”-8” long that they served kind of raw/pickled on some bread. I tried it, but didn’t care too much for those. We bought some stroopwaffles and a few other things, then took a tour of the townhall that is right in the middle of the square where they have the market. It is way neat. Also the churches around the square are really cool. One of them had lots of bells and plays songs on the bells every hour. Gouda is a really neat little town and reminded me a little of Brugge, but totally different. They also make these mini kind of pancake like things about the size of a silver dollar. They serve about 10 of them on a plate with melted butter and powdered sugar. Those were great too.