Day 9 (June 13th)

Went to breakfast at our corner bakery and walked Al to work. Went back to the room and called Hilton Hotels to use my Hilton points to reserve a room in Amsteram. I did some research on Solingen and other surrounding areas near Dusseldorf. Found out most of the castles were driving distance away. Met Al for lunch and went to a pizza place called Lupos. I had a mushroom pizza that was probably 13-14 inchs in diameter with a cold beer. I asked for some crushed hot red pepper and instead he brought two different containers. One was garlic and oil and the other was picante with oil. Both were very tasty on the pizza. We agreed that we would be back again. Note: the prices for the pizza are different if you take out vs sit down. On the way back to the office we saw an interesting restaurant called space burgers. Al later asked and found out that they have good burgers (we will try this place out another time). I went back to the apartment and hung out in the backyard garden most of the afternoon doing research on Amsterdam. It was a beautiful day outside. Al came home later and we went to dinner with YH, Rajni and another called from Citibank, Basim. Basim was from Syria but lives in London before coming to Dusseldorf. We decided to eat at the Lebanese restaurant that we had dessert at the other day. The place was packed and we were lucky to get a table downstairs. The place was decorated very authentically. After a little bit a belly dance came out and started doing her thing. She then came over and grabbed YH and I to go up and dance with her. We reluctantly went and looked like fools. Basim spoke Arabic and took care of ordering food for us. A little later the waiter came back with eight or so different dishes. They were all tasty and everybody "dung" in literally because there were no serving utensils. People were using their fingers or their used forks to serve themselves (Al was not pleased). I was somewhat considerate and used my knife to serve myself. I had a few Almazda beers (Lebanese beers) with dinner that complemented the food nicely. The belly dancer came back again and pulled some other suckers from their table to dance. We ended the meal with some baklava. The food was good but it was a long meal especially since they had a problem splitting the check (Citibank expense issue). Got back to the room around 11:35 PM and laid down with a full stomach.