The Venice of the North (better known as Geithoorn)

On July 30th, we learned some new things about our newly-adopted homeland. On that day, we rented a Smart Car, which for those of you that are not familiar, is like a real car, only much, much smaller (and outrageously adorable...I can't believe I did not take any photos of it) and drove to the tiny city of Geithoorn, which is known for its network of canals and its lack of vehicular traffic (leading to its inevitable moniker as the Venice of the North). The thing to do here is to rent small "whisper boats", so-called because they are powered by silent electric engines and follow one of a number of color-coded trails. The first thing we learned during this process is that the Dutch are way too trusting. We knocked on the door of a house advertising boat rentals. The rental guy, who had given us really good advice on an Italian restaurant earlier, now gave us a boat. Just like that. No form to fill out, no deposit, no liability release, nothing. I don't think he even got our names. Granted the boat, at full bore went about 6 kilometers an hour. Had we decided to abscond with it back to Amsterdam, we would probably still be out there right now, but the point is that we were free to try. He even went back into the house to fetch us an umbrella for the ride...meaning we could have stolen his boat and his umbrella! But the umbrella brings me to the second thing that I learned that day, that is that we were way too trusting of Mother Nature. Being from South Florida, sudden showers are nothing new to me, but the weather that day was positively schizophrenic. One moment it was sunny and beautiful, the next torrential downpour. Five minutes later, here comes the sun. Seven minutes later, raindrops keep falling on my head. It went on this way for the entire hour and a half we had the boat. It got to the point I gave up on putting on and taking off the cheap poncho (read garbage bag with arm holes) I had just purchased. I simply left it on, so during the sunny intervals, I looked like some nut job who just so happened to like wearing Hefty-wear for an afternoon boat ride. Shawn has a quite a number of those pictures that he has yet to share with me. The final thing we learned that day was that if you got lost and stopped to ask for directions at a greeting card manufacturing office, the owner would come out to his car to retrieve his atlas, photocopy it and highlight what he felt was the best possible route. So to recap, Dutch people= helpful and trusting souls; Mother Nature=either a good practical joker or a total bitch.