Wrapping up Our Week in Eindhoven

This morning Nate left early to pick up some vlaai (Dutch pie) and some plates and napkins to bring it into work. He is bringing it in as a "thank you" to a group that helped fix an issue he had at work a month ago.

After breakfast and a quick run to the store the kids are playing really nicely together making up some game and drawing, so I don’t want to stop them. I'm actually still really tired as I haven’t been sleeping well, so I take the opportunity to rest a little with the extra pillows since Nate is gone.

Yesterday the kids saw a Mandalorian meal at Burger King that came with a special cup but they were sold out at that location. They really want to go check the BK in Eindhoven for lunch to see if they have it. They don't have it though, as I think it’s only in select countries and we were in Belgium when they saw it. We eat there anyway as it's the cheapest place in town.

Nate gets home after a super busy day at work and we head over to his coworker Piet-Hein’s House. They have a son around the same age as Landon named Vince, and he speaks English very well. They typically start learning English in 6th grade, but their grades are a little different than ours. So even though he's also 11 he's going into grade 8.

The kids play some Triominos together and then go out to the garden to play with a ball. Piet brought Nate out to look at cars and shortly after it starts pouring rain.

For dinner tonight we are having Chinese take out from their friend's restaurant and it tastes amazing! All the food is very good!

The kids learn a new game called Regenwormen, where you roll dice tying to get points and worms. They have to play a shortened version of the game as our hosts have an important neighborhood meeting they need to attend at 8 PM. This works out okay as Nate has a work call scheduled for 9 PM, so we need to get back to the hotel.

Last day

Tuesday I have one main goal and that is to wash laundry. We originally booked an apartment that had a washer and dryer in it, but the week before we arrived they informed us we had to have a studio as the apartment was needing maintenance.

Landon noticed a note on a door in the hallway that there is laundry facilities on the 9th floor, so I go to check it out. There are only two washers and two dryers, and one set is already being used. I read all the flyers on the walls and then used my google lens to figure out how to run the machine. They are very different from US machines, the equivalent to a normal cycle will take over 2 hours to wash. I really don't want to wait that long per cycle so I look at the other options. I decide to just do "quick wash" which is a 45 minute cycle. Our clothes aren't that dirty, so this should do fine.

I see a note on the dryer instructions that say you need to empty the water at the end of the cycle. This is common on dryers in Europe and I've had to do it on past trips when we had an apartment. Problem is I don’t see a sink or drain in the room, so I go ask at the front desk. Thankfully after calling maintenance they say these will drain themselves, so hopefully that's true.

I set a timer on my phone so that I can be sure to get the clothes out as soon as possible, knowing others may be waiting. I let the kids watch some cartoons and I go back up to the laundry room just before my load is supposed to be done. The time keeps running down but not in the same number of minutes displayed. The first load takes twice as long as it said it would, so glad I wasn't running a 2 hour cycle! So the next load I put in a little less soap, which seems to help the time be more accurate. It takes me about 7 hours to wash and dry my three loads of laundry.

As I finish up the laundry I remember that we were going to have the kids try a few Dutch desserts, so we rush to the bakery and buy one Bosch Bollen and a half vlaai just before the bakery closes. Unfortunately I can't get a flavor that Nate suggested, but I figured it was better to try something rather than nothing. The kids are big fans of both.

Bosch Bollen is like a giant cream puff filled with a whipped cream

Back at the apartment I take quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to pack. I pack Nate's work clothes and other things we don't really need in one suitcase, so we won't need to bring everything into our hotel every night.

We pick up dinner from i-Wok & Go and while there the rental car company calls from the company that we are going to rent from for our vacation. We need to go pick up the car but Nate had got off work late. They are very upset that he is late picking up the car, even though they aren’t closing for awhile.

We quickly eat our food so we can go return the one rental car and pick up the next.

As we are trying to find a gas station to fill up our car, we go through a huge downpour. Although it doesn't last long the ground is still very wet when we are trying to walk into the airport terminal for the rental counter. My new shoes seem to be designed in such a way that it flings water on top of my mesh shoes, so my shoes get a little wet and squishy.

Double rainbow

We paid for a full size car and ended up with a fancy Mercedes wagon. It’s a hybrid which is nice but the trunk is smaller then we had hoped for. The trunk was part of the reason we booked a full size to make sure it could handle our luggage.

Double sunroofs

Navigation that has virtual augmented reality animations of where you should go

Traffic light camera allows you to see the lights on the screen. In Europe the street lights are on the close side of the intersection, making them very difficult to see if you're the first car in line (especially if you are tall).

On the way back to the hotel we swing by the larger grocery store that's on the outskirts of town, so the kids can see what that looks like. They have a much larger selection of food. We are leaving tomorrow so we don't need to buy anything, but we did find some Cool American Doritos.