French Fries for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week has never been quite like this before. Erin was actually out of town until Wednesday visiting some friends from the US that happened to be in Cambridge, UK. England was cold, rainy, and foggy as expected, but Cambridge reminded Erin so much of the time she spent in Oxford during college that she absolutely loved it! Really just being in a country where everyone speaks English is all that is necessary to make Erin's vacation perfect - even if they do drive on the wrong side of the road! We even had lunch one day in a great pub complete with leather furniture, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and Guinness and beef pie. Mmmmmm.

Thanksgiving Day had no Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade or turkey...though we tried to get turkey! We took our friends to Harlem, a city only about 20 minutes away from Amsterdam where we got to take a tour of Corrie Ten Boom's house...eventually. When we arrived at the house the first time, the sign said an English tour was to begin in about 30 minutes. So we decided that, rather than stand around in the rain and cold, we would walk the short distance to the town square and see the church where Mozart and Handel played organ concerts. Well, then we ran into a cheese store on our way back to the Ten Boom House and had to buy some cheese. This took longer than expected and when we arrived, only a minute or two late, at the door for our tour, the sign had again changed to read that the next tour would not take place for another couple hours! Ah well. We toured the church and introduced our friends to a real Dutch lunch: coffee, tea, croquettes and toasties. We made sure to get to the door of the house about 10 minutes early so as not to miss the tour.

It was well worth the wait. Corrie Ten Boom was a Christian who organized safe hiding places for Jews and Dutch Resistance workers during World War II. Her own house had a tiny hiding place where seven people ended up being hidden for two days before being rescued and escaping to other hiding places. Corrie Ten Boom and several of her family members were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Corrie survived, miraculously smuggled a Bible into the camp with her and led Bible studies, and then spent the rest of her life evangelizing all over the world and writing many books about her faith and life.

Traffic on the way back to Amsterdam was horrendous. By the time we got home it was about time to take the trams into the centrum for Thanksgiving dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, one of the only places in Amsterdam that serves Thanksgiving dinner. We apparently got there too early since our reservations were not until 7:40, so the hostess would not seat us. We wandered around the canals of the centrum for about 20 minutes and then returned to eat dinner. We must have set a world record for the longest time a party has stayed in the Hard Rock Cafe. Once seated it took a while to get our drinks and for the waitress to return to take our orders. Unfortunately, she told us the last of the Thanksgiving dinners had just been ordered. We assumed the table of 38 next to us had something to do with that! Oh well. We had all decided that if the turkey was gone, we would all be OK with ordering other things. We did ask if there was any pumpkin pie left. Our waitress went to check and indeed there were some pieces left, so she assured us she would reserve four pieces for us. Everyone ordered hamburgers and french fries (except for Erin - chicken pasta for her) and sat back to wait.....and wait, and wait, and wait. I think we waited about an hour and a half for our food. Our friends were about to chew their arms off they were so hungry! When we finally saw our waitress again, we asked for some crackers or something, which she promised to bring but never got around to. The manager had to visit our table several times to apologize for the slowness in the kitchen. The food was good when it finally arrived, but then we waited again for our desserts to appear. Once again, the manager visited our table to explain something about a mix up in the kitchen: no pumpkin pie! Actually there was one piece left, which we let one of our friends have and the manager gave the rest of us free desserts. Our waitress showed up after the fact to explain she was too upset to come talk to us herself. Apparently she and the chef were having an argument and not talking to each other so the pies got sold to other customers without her knowledge. She offered us any coffee or tea we wanted on the house, so we got some free coffee to go with our free brownie sundaes. After four hours, no turkey, and no pumpkin pie, we got a bill for our meal cut in half with free desserts and free coffees!

Even though dinner was much longer and not quite as holiday-ish as we had planned, we had a great view of the canal and boats and a long time to catch up with our friends from the US. All in all it was a good Thanksgiving. (Erin definitely prefers chocolate brownies to pumpkin pie anyway!)