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July 1, 2007
My Beautiful Launderette
We left England and took a long uneventful ferry ride across the Channel to Belgium. Thank goodness none of us had any motion sickness. It was rough out there and the bathrooms were line-up with people getting sick. We arrived in Belgium and to the lovely town of Brugge.
We spent two uneventful days in Brugge eating chocolate, climbing clock towers, and gliding down the beautiful canals in lovely little boats. It was definitely bad for the diet…really bad. The chocolate was to die for. Will had a Belgium waffle with hot chocolate sauce on it for a snack…I had one bite and my heart was pounding.
While in Brugge Justin and I decided to take some time to do some laundry. We got directions to the laundry from our very nice hotel girl. We set off with three very heavy bags of laundry…several days worth. At home it is normal to do 10 loads a week…while we are using less here…we had a lot. We followed directions and got to the spot where the laundry was meant to be and nothing…it was a café. We looked around…back tracked and
still nothing. We headed back with the same three heavy bags no closer to getting cleaned. After dinner we decided to see if we can find it…just for fun. There it was two blocks past the spot on the map. We got there just in time for the laundry lady to tell us they were closing.
Today we drove to Holland. We are in another darling town outside Amsterdam called Haarlem. We got settled in our apartment and located the local laundry. Will, Justin and I set out with our three bags to find the laundry. Once again we followed the map…again we were at the end of our map and no laundry. Justin wouldn’t give up…we found us “My Beautiful Launderette” the local laundry. Hurray…we sorted and filled two machines. We had our euro coins ready…the soap was loaded…and there was no slot for the money.
All the signs were in Dutch. No one was around…we had no idea what to do. We couldn’t pull out all the soapy dirty clothes and hike back 2 miles…the only machine in the place that took coins seemed to dispense soap powder and we didn’t need that. The dryers took
20 cent euro coins but the washers’ coin slots were blocked. I was ready to one cry and two kick the machines. I was having one of those get me back home moments…out of frustration I started putting coins in the soap dispenser just to see….not only did a pile of soap shoot out with my euro coins but a strange token. Justin said look it goes into the machine. The weird token fit in the blocked slot…and boom the laundry started. Relief set in and a trip to the pub across the square helped the “I need America” moment. While folding the finally clean clothes I met a super nice Dutch guy that reminded me of why we were doing this and as I walked out of “ My Beautiful Launderette” with our clean clothes I came to appreciate all those loads of laundry done in my own house at my leisure just walking to the garage. I never thought I would feel that about laundry!!
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Kathy Duryea
non-member comment
Laundrette
As usual so funny! No, you will NOT kill each other before the adventure is done... you said it, you need each other!! One with a map, one without!! One complaint, where are the photos??? Terry and I both LOVED Brugge and we visited the surrounding countryside visitng the WWI and WWII museums and battlegrounds, Battle of the Bulge, etc... the boys might like these areas... can't wait for the next posting... can scott write or are you the only creative one?