My cousin Bert and his wife Violet live in Zoetermeer. Which would be my home base for this trip. Their neighborhood is called Seghwaert. It is about a half hour ride with the Randstad Rail to the Central Station in The Hague. The Randstad Rail is a light rail system. Something between a tram and a train. It has it's own track with elevated stations or stops (haltes), they are called halte or station depending on what it was before it became part of the Randstad Rail. Around the station is a shopping center with a couple of bigger stores (Albert Heijn - LIDL) and a bunch of smaller stores, banks and restaurants. And of course bikes every where. The service desk at the Albert Heijn sells the tickets for the Randstad Rail. Some of the trains had a ticket machine, others did not. The station's platforms do not have ticket machines, but they may have a validation machine, at other stations you have to validate before going to the platform. You must validate your ticket (timestamp) before boarding the train, as there are no validating machines on the trains. CONFUSED ? ? - I sure was . . .  You buy a strippen kaart, which is a ticket with a number of spaces for time stamps, next you determine how many zones you are going to travel, add 1 and fold your card and time stamp. On the other hand if you travel after 9:00 AM you can purchase a Dalurenretour, (Off Peak Round Trip), which is cheaper. In my case, because of the number of zones, it was cheaper than a one way trip on the strippen kaart. Of course all this knowledge will be obsolete the next time I go back. By that time the OV-Pass will be in effect, A pass you must purchase and which you swipe going on and off the train. And the computer determines the number of zones you traveled. Kind of like E-ZPass for pedestrians, or exactly like the PATH SmartLink Card.

I arrived at Schiphol Airport on Thursday morning, Bert and Violet were waiting for me. Bert had to work in the afternoon. Violet and I took advantage of the great weather to have lunch at cafe/restaurant AA-zicht, right on the water of the Noord AA. On the way back to the car we stopped at the Kinder Boerderij (Children's Farm), "de Balijhoeve". Here kids can touch and feed the animals. I guess we would call it a Petting Zoo, but it really is a working goat farm where they make the goat cheese on the premises. The goat cheese is for sale in the shop, as are wooden shoes and other souvenirs.