Groningen

Another day, another bucket list item checked off

Today, Bailey’s people who we’re house-and-dog-sitting for gave us a treat: They scheduled a dog walker they know to come over and give us a few hours off so we could go see Groningen for the day. (Thank you Susan and Peter!!)

So after doing morning play time with and feeding Bailey, off we went on a 50 minute bus ride to Groningen, a city northeast of here that we’ve wanted to see ever since we first became enamored with the Netherlands.

The bus dropped us at the train station and the first thing we saw was the bike parking facility. Look! More bikes!

The weather was much cooler today than we expected, and there was a pretty good breeze as well so one of the first things we did was stop for a hot cup of coffee at a sidewalk location where we could people-watch.

And that was about it for the sunshine. After that we wandered around the city center snapping photos of everything we saw (because that’s what we do). There was a farmer’s market going today and we saw lots of delicious looking foods.

And of course we saw lots of the stuff that makes these old European towns so interesting to us westerners.

And of course there were more bikes…

And then it was time for coffee again and a bite to eat. And another sidewalk café. And we realized something - we had been under the impression that during business hours, the center of Groningen was blocked off to motor vehicles, but that was not the case today. There were lots of delivery trucks in the morning and a constant stream of cars and loud mopeds roaring by as the day went on.

We both agreed that Groningen was fun for a few hours but it lacked the charm that Leeuwarden had. There was a lot of traffic, (on foot, on bikes and all the motorized vehicles) and pretty much wherever we were, we felt like we right right in someone’s way.

So yeah, we made some memories and got lots of good photos, but it was so nice to get back to Bailey and the quiet of Heerenveen.

Tomorrow - we’re not going anywhere!