Well, our evening plans unfortunately went poof tonight ... We set out in the dark and drizzle at 7 as planned to meet our tour guide for the pub tour. We met at the appointed place, waited and waited for others to show up, but no one else came. We were then informed that the guide (who only shows up after the guidees have arrived; in the meantime, there's some other hired dude you wait around with) doesn't do tours with less than three "discount" customers (we had a half-off coupon from our hostel). In the end, the liaison with the guide -- who had the guide on his cell phone -- was like "Sorry!" The guide wanted us to talk to him on the liaison's phone, but we were like "No, never mind, we're leaving." So then we spent a good 40 minutes wandering around nearby streets looking for a "fun" bar were "we [could] meet people" (I'm quoting my sister here, though in actuality, she was looking to more meet "people" of the male variety, though she has a man already!). That was a no go, so we slowly headed back towards our hostel.
A block from our hostel, we perused the menu of a restaurant we'd walked by and eyed a few times over the past couple days. We decided to go ahead and order one dish and one dessert to split between us, and ordered it as a take-out item, to avoid having to tip (plus, it was a bit of a hoity-toity looking place). We then enjoyed a lovely dinner of pistachio-encrusted chicken breast with a lemony cream sauce, and pineapple slices with mascapone cheese, coconut milk and raspberry sauce.
Around 9:15, we wandered back outside and scouted out two bars across the street from that restaurant we'd eaten food from. We went into one, but just ended up sitting by our lonesomes at the bar. There were a few groups of people in there, but they all kept to themselves, and the layout of the bar wasn't such that we could easily join in any of the various conversations. So after the one drink... back we came. Our clothes and hair were saturated with cigarette smoke (I swear, one of our two people smokes here -- annoying), so we've each just finished taking a late-night shower.
Hopefully, we'll get to bed at a decent time, as tomorrow will be a whirlwind for us. We have to check out of our room by 10 a.m. Then we'll stash our luggage in our hostel's luggage room. We'll make one last, quick souvenir run, likely to the Old Town Square area, and then by 11:30, we have to get to the metro (subway) station a few blocks away to head towards the airport. Then we transfer to a bus that takes us the last leg. Our flight back to the Netherlands is at 2, so by 5 or so, we should be sipping tea at our cousin's in Utrecht. We'll be heading out of the Netherlands for the final time Thursday morning (en route to Reykjavik), so tomorrow night will also be a bit busy, in that we'll hopefully get everything nearly packed up and weighed, etc.
We're nearly to the home stretch of our two weeks of travels, and I must admit I'm really looking forward to relaxing in my own home! But we've definitely been having a great time out here.
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