Today was a very busy day. We got a later start because both Marco and I are still fighting off a cold. Once we were up, Marco drove to Skip’s house and the three of us joined the farmer (Marco’s mom’s boyfriend) at his farm, since he agreed to show us around. It was so much fun! Sure it was super cold, and snowing, but we got to ride in a tractor, feed the cows, watch him milk a cow, and check out all the other animals.
After our farm trip, we got home and quickly changed for our family dinner. Marco’s mom and her boyfriend invited the entire family to a restaurant close by called Maxima. There were 16 of us total! I was a little skeptical about going to the restaurant that was Mexican/Argentinean/Italian food. After watching Gordon’s Kitchen Nightmares even I know you should focus on one type of food when you open a restaurant. The food turned out to be very good, but the service was CRAP! We waited 2 hours before our food started to arrive and before that, it took the waitress forever to bring our drinks. We went through 3 rounds of drinks before the appetizers arrived, and if you’ve ever been to Holland you know there is no such thing as refills! Even when you order water, LOL! Anyway, everyone seemed to have a great time once they started to eat. Ordering dessert also took forever but lucky for us it didn’t take 2 hours. Marco, Skip, and I had to bail early because we had promised our friend Ronald we would come by to see him. From what I heard, the rest of the family didn’t leave the restaurant until 10:30pm, which means dinner lasted 4.5 hours! Gordon Ramsey would have screamed his lungs out if he had witnessed this dinner service!After dropping off Skip in Gouda we headed towards Ronald’s house (which is also in Gouda).
Although we were a little bit late, due to the ever-lasting dinner, they (Ronald and his girlfriend Simone) were kind enough to stay up and wait for us to arrive. It’s always awesome to see Ronald and Simone!! We hung out at their place, talked, had snacks, and before we knew it, it was passed midnight. I hope we have more time to hang out with them next time we’re in town. It always feels like we run out of time to do everything we want to do! I think next time we’ll have to have a clear schedule before we leave the States so that we have enough time with everyone and actually get to see some of the friends I haven’t seen in years (including all my buddies at Nike).
