Bagels, bikes and bangers

It's been a while since we had a house guest, so it was a delight to have Sarah - a former neighbour from those halcyon days in Haines Street (North Melbourne) - over for a couple of nights earlier this month.

She'd just completed an amazing tour with MUCS (Melbourne University Choral Society), singing her heart out with 79 other compatriots in cold churches throughout Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. After taking an impressive 16 hour journey on an overnight train, from Prague (and not in a sleeper), Sarah finally made it to Eindhoven.

The first thing was to give Sarah a home-cooked meal! Thanks to my trusty Karin Martini cookbook, I could do up a quick roast chicken with smashed potatoes and lemon.

She was then happy to have a spot to sleep fully prostrate, and got some shut eye before our little day trip to Amsterdam the next day.

We awoke in the morning to what promised to be a beautiful sunny day in Eindhoven, but unfortunately by the time we got to Amsterdam, it was misty and moody.

But it didn't stop us on our quest for a very good - if not the best - sandwich in Amsterdam.

We wandered for hours through the streets of district Jordaan - it was full of lovely shops and lots of ... well, no one. We wondered whether there might be a big football final on, or something majorly cultural driving the crowds indoors (beyond the mist).

It was a Saturday, and yet we barely heard a non-Dutch accent and everywhere it was an eerie quiet! Quite nice to have such a lovely destination all to ourselves.

We each bought some souvenirs for ourselves (a belt from Bijenkorf for Sarah and some new Camper shoes for Jane ... Edwin got to carry everything!) and enjoyed several rather nice coffees in various cafés throughout the city. After introducing the interesting texture of kroket to our ever open-to-new-foreign-foods-that-could-be-a-dare guest, we took the early evening train home in time to set up the guest futon so Sarah could get some more rest after another long (but exciting!) day.

The following day we decided to take Sarah on an adventure of ... not a lifetime, but one she'd not had in a long time. We rode our Dutch bikes into Eindhoven Centrum to get a bagel at one of the haunts we hadn't visited in a while- Bagels and Juice. The journey there was very exciting - a few crashes (!), but all minor, and a very flushed and happy Sarah made it to the cafe and enjoyed her new favourite: goat's cheese with raspberry sauce on sesame bagel. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of Sarah on the bike - we were too busy having fun!

The day before Sarah had, in the utmost inquisitiveness, bought a 2 euro sausage from the HEMA, and we decided to try it before she set off on her next part of her itinerary ... despite how full we were from our other culinary expeditions. So we had a bit of rookworst, a popular banger in these parts, which was lovely with some potatoes dauphin and packet gravy.

It was sad to see my friend Sarah off at the Eindhoven train station after our lunch. But she was off to Scotland to spend time with some family and of course was looking forward to seeing them.

Sarah did say out loud the day before that she "liked Amsterdam the best", which was quite flattering, seeing she'd been to Vienna and Prague this time - places I find quite breathtaking and beautiful. But she thought Amsterdam was these things. I guess they're a couple more b-words to add to the litany of b-words of Sarah's trip, like bagels, bikes and bangers - and breathtakingly beautiful Amsterdam!