Today, Anna came to the west of the Netherlands for a day, so we decided to go and have tea somewhere together! First we found the Haguish tea salon Lapsang, but we didn’t have a lot of time, and if we would go there, we would spend most of our time traveling there and back. We decided to visit this place another time, and to meet each other in Gouda today.
We met at the train station of Gouda, and casually walked to the city centre. We wanted to have tea in the museum cafe, close to the church, which was said to have a nice atmosphere. We walked through a picturesque gate and found ourselves on the terrace, which was still empty.
It was still rather chilly, so we decided to move inside. That wasn’t disappointing, because the inside of the cafe looked good as well!
We ordered tea, and were promptly served. However… there wasn’t a big selection of herbal teas (which is important for Anna, since she doesn’t take theine and rather no ginseng too): just rooibos and camomille. And those were exactly the flavours which she doesn’t like so much. Alas. She didn’t take a second cup (the server did go check if there was fresh mint, but there wasn’t). The first server however became a bit defensive:
(Anna) “It’s a shame that you don’t have many herbal teas, just two flavours”
(Server) “No, we have THREE, we also have white tea”
(A) “It’s still not much”
(S) “Well, I think three kinds of herbal tea is quite a lot, most cafes don’t have that much!”
(A) “Unfortunately they are the flavours that many people don’t like, though.”
(S) “Well, they do drink it.”
(A) “Yes, that’s because there is no other option.”
Etcetera. Kind of a shame. Just saying “We’re sorry, we only have these flavours in our assortment” would suffice, but trying to give the customer the feeling that she is overasking and that she has no good taste is not too good for you impression as a cafe, I think.
I ordered an egg salad sandwich, because it sounded nice, and I needed some lunch, but unfortunately it never arrived. The order wasn’t passed to the kitchen, and once I found out we didn’t really want to stay, so we asked for the check.
We decided to have lunch elsewhere, and we found a weird little brasserie close to Lieneke’s place (where Anna would go afterwards), where the sign said that they served tosti’s. We went in and it had a rather funny interior… there was a tiled floor, there were tables that were rather chiquely laid with white sheets, cutlery, and crystal lookalike glasses. The chairs were covered with (faux) leather, but at some of the tables there was an extra, different chair, and halfway the brasserie the furniture changed completely, from the karaoke set on… the men behind the bar were strange types as well. For a moment, we doubted whether we wanted to be here. However, if everything is kind of strange and the restaurant exists anyways, something must be right, and who knows, it might be the food!
We ordered tosti’s with salmon, and they tasted good. We were kind of chuckling the whole time though, because of the unique situations and locations we had encountered today! Much too soon it was time for Anna to leave (even though our energy levels said it was the right time), so we said goodbye, and I went into the city centre to take some more photographs.
By the way, I was secretly looking for a new (bigger) handbag, and when I didn’t find anything in Gouda, I decided to check the Desigual store in The Hague for new models. And yes, they did have new bags, one of them was more sturdy than the average Desigual bag, and nice and straight (good for papers, tablet, etc.)… I needed it! So, I even got a new bag today!
