Carrying on from our trip to Kinderdijk, we then headed off to Gouda – cheese, yum!
Sat Nav lady got us where we needed to be minus a small hiccup trying to find somewhere to park.
On our drive into Gouda, you could smell the cheese in the air (and not the cut the cheese kind either!).
The city was very picturesque once you got into it. There are a couple of city-canals, or grachten, in Gouda. We found a parking spot and we parked right next to one of them. Look how much space I have to get out.
Another view from out of the car.
We walked down into the centre of the city and were greeted with some good views. Right in the city they have a market place and in the market place is the Town Hall dating from the 15th century.
As we got into Gouda, we could hear some bells ringing. They were from the town hall as there was a wedding going on. We took a couple of videos of it. In it you can see the wedding party and hear the bells.
Across from the town hall they have the weigh house, or waag, for the cheese. It is used a cheese museum now though.
If you didn’t realise that Gouda was connected to cheese, you would certainly get it from walking down the streets.
As we rounded one of the corners, we found a reasonably priced shop so we decided that we would buy a block of Gouda cheese. Outside the shop was a funny statue that I wanted Jamie to stand next to for a picture but she said no. Below is said funny statue.
Before we headed round the corner, the wedding party came out of the town hall and did a balloon release. Not quite sure of the significance of this.
After we had walked around the city, we decided we wanted some ice cream and headed to the shop we saw on our way in. After we got some, we went by the Sint Janskerk, or St Johns Church, to have a look at it.
The church is the longest in The Netherlands (not the oldest as I may or may not have misread on a website) and has a number of stained glass windows. For this reason, it has been placed on a UNESCO list of Dutch monuments.
After we left Gouda, we decided that we would head to The Hague Temple so we could see the outside of it and the grounds. I had read that the grounds were barely bigger than the building itself.
On our drive over, we thought Sat Nav lady had taken us the wrong way. Turns out that it is like most Temples and in the middle of somewhere to nowhere. To find out what Temples are, click here. To find out what our beliefs are, click here.
Once we arrived at the Temple I could see what they meant about the grounds being slightly bigger than the building.
Unlike most of the other Temples that we have been to, there wasn’t very much in the way of grounds to see. Jamie & I like to walk around the Temple grounds and enjoy the beauty and peace that there are in the grounds.
As we had our brief stroll around, we noticed that the name of the church is pretty long in Dutch. Not that we doubted it.
By the time we had walked around, we were at a point where we were hot and tired and hungry. We decided to head into Eindhoven since we hadn’t been there and since we were so close to it.
As we got close to the city centre, we came across a statue on the side of the road.
We passed the bowling statue and as we got closer to the centre we came across this building,
and then this one right in the city centre.
We parked and had a walk around to try and find somewhere to eat. We saw McDonalds & KFC but decided that we wanted some good food and not fast food. We wandered around wondering if we would find anywhere. We then stumbled upon what looked like the restaurant quarter.
Since we couldn’t find one with a menu in English, we decided to head back to the hotel. On our way there, we came across a takeaway that sold pasta. We decided to stop there and get us some dinner. We ate it at the hotel and it was only good because we were both hungry. That is where our last day of tourism ended.