The Netherlands and Belgium

Travel abroad is best handled (IMHO) when you don't have too many expectations. There were some small issues, but nothing that detracted from the whole experience. I have made up a short-and-sweet version of our trip, but there are always stories that need to be relayed in person.

Amsterdam: In the center (within the ring of canals) is picturesque and very much a lovely place. Getting around is easiest on foot, much of what you'd want to see is pretty close. The tram or buses get you to the farther places. Once in the city, you quickly learn to pay attention to your surroundings. There is a real danger from getting hit by bicyclists, quiet electric trams, cars, buses and motorists. These come from seemingly all directions!
We did the touristy things that are always fun. Saw the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank museum, of course the Van Gogh museum. They were all under renovation to some extent, so we could not see them in their entirety. Took a canal tour, the first of several, and really enjoyed ourselves. A friendly waiter in an Italian restaurant put it best. When you're on the street, you can really only see the buildings across the canal from you. The view from a canal boat is much better, you see both sides of the street equally well (the buildings are tall and the streets, narrow). Having a friend that lives there, we met up with him a couple days after arriving so he could show us his city. It turns out that he wasn't all that great as a tour guide, but we had fun non-the-less. His time is more spent on his college studies/research than traipsing around the city, so he hadn't done the touristy things yet. It was a learning experience for all of us!

The Dutch have an interesting culture. Very open, very straight forward and direct, very proud. Almost without exception, they are intelligent and comfortable with who and where they are. It's refreshing to see that the material excess of America has not taken hold here. Amsterdam definitely has a seedier side, but it is quite smaller than what most Americans would think. The Red Light district, coffee and smart shops (cannabis and mushrooms) are available, but they exist mostly because tourists spend money there. It isn't a free-for-all, anything goes type of city. Marijuana is illegal (merely tolerated inside coffee shops), and the sex shops are highly regulated. The prostitutes pay taxes and are all health-screened. And you know what? I'm glad. It shows that the government doesn't mollycoddle its people. They expect the populous to be responsible for their actions. It shows a maturity of law. Our government could learn quite a lot from the Dutch.

Random question: why are there so damn many Argentinian restaurants in Amsterdam? Some streets literally had three of these shops within one block. Overall, the food we had was generally good. I was really surprised of the high quality of food within the bus/train stations. L made sense of it, saying that the Dutch have to eat this stuff too, and they wouldn't stand for below-grade food! One of the highlights was Frites (French fries to us). The Dutch take their frites very seriously, and the taste and texture shows this has risen to a high art. Some restaurants, even high-level ones, make a production out of bringing a container (like a big wok) of freshly fried frites to you and seasoning them table-side. Fancy! The best and time-honored way to enjoy them is with a very fresh home-made style mayonnaise. Ketchup is only for tourists. Yes, it's fried in animal lard, but it is not something you eat everyday.
The outskirts of central downtown show areas with bland buildings and uninteresting parks. More suited to housing lots of people and businesses than trying to be architecturally diverse or artistically creative. The Honda civic of neighborhoods, in contrast to the the tourist-centric neighborhoods. Beyond this section, the density of buildings shallows out. More cows and sheep than people, grazing happily in vast green meadows. A trip to a dairy farm was in order, to sample some of the best Gouda I've ever eaten.
Clara Maria dairy http://www.claramaria.nl/?lang=en
They make clogs (klompen) there as well. Fun! We were intrigued by how far you could see, because the land is so flat. The B&B we stayed at was the Hotel Keizershof. http://www.hotelkeizershof.nl/

We took day trips to Edam and Haarlem, both are a quick train ride from Amsterdam. Edam was the slowest-paced city that I've ever been in. It was a nice change from the bustle of Amsterdam. We walked from one end of the city to the other in an afternoon. Mid-day snack was on the shores of the North sea. Very calming there, but nothing like beaches in California or Florida. Haarlem was a beautiful addition to our vacation. Just took half a day bumming about. They have a magnificent church there, the Grote Kerk (great Church), in which stands an overwhelmingly large pipe organ. It is monstrous in size and grand in design. http://www.bavo.nl/bladen/welkomkerk.htm
It's one of those places that's so huge inside that without special lenses and tripod you'd never be able to capture the scope of it all. And probably not even then.
Also went to a wonderful museum there, the Teyelers Museum. Here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teylers_Museum
It holds a very large collection of scientific equipment, fossils and art. They had a special exhibit of the artwork of Giovanni Battista Piranesi - absolutely captivating. Google him, you might like it.

From Amsterdam, we headed via train to Brugge (pronounced Brooj, with the j as in jam). This ended up being our favorite town. The idyllic medieval village, with its hundreds-of-years-old buildings and even older churches was freakin' beautiful. Only had a fraction of the canals that Holland has, but the B&B that we stayed in was right on one of them. That canal house was breathtaking! I can't really describe it with either words or pictures (though I'll try), but it was just fascinating. http://www.pakhuis-brugge.be/
Four stories tall, typically narrow, but inside it was huge! And that was before we discovered that the owner only had half the available area open to guests. There's a picture that I snapped from her ground floor up to the wheel (Canal house looking up), that was on the third floor. I don't know why it was there, but it must have been twenty feet across. The second day we were there, the owner (a very nice lady living alone in that huge place) slipped and fell off of her bicycle on a rainy street. She broke her collarbone! We felt so badly for her, but she was very strong-willed and wouldn't accept much help from us. She was supposed to travel out of town (it was the Procession in two days) but had to postpone it a day. I hope she got help from her family, we didn't see her again. Her next-door neighbor took care of us until we left Brugge.

One of the few things we planned ahead for was the big parade on May 1st called the Procession of the Holy Blood. Actually calling it a parade is an understatement. It was several hours long, with (as far as we could tell) every citizen involved. It is to honor the Relic of the Holy Blood, which they believe to be from Jesus Christ. http://www.holyblood.com/EN/0.asp
The weather was even acting all Old-Testament like. Sunny, to rain, to hail, to rain to sunny again all within a matter of minutes. We were very cold at at one point, but we had a good time. The entire production felt somewhat somber, actually. It was quite the spectacle.

We went to a very nice restaurant there, called the Flemish pot. http://www.devlaamschepot.be/en/index2.htm
Actually ate there twice, we enjoyed it so much. White asparagus, seafood stews (waterzooi) and pancakes (panenkoken) were there specialties. Completely yummy, probably very fattening, but worth it! Leah bought their cookbook, if you'd like to take a peek at it. I'm trying to see if I can make something from it, but haven't decided on anything just yet.
Yes, we really enjoyed our time in Brugge. It was certainly the highlight of the trip.

From there, it was a fairly short train ride to Brussels. Now this was a bit of culture shock! We had almost no language barrier in the other places, but this is a French-speaking area. The people we met weren't mean, per se, but not especially helpful. I wouldn't really call Brussels a tourist destination, but we did have some fun there. The hotel we stayed at was close to, and relied on business from, the European Union buildings. It was normally a 380 Euro-a-night hotel, but was dead on the weekdays and drastically reduced its prices. Quite a fancy hotel, actually. It was pretty much in a rural area of the city, but was perfectly comfortable. We had to metro into downtown for the museums, Grand Place and such. I don't think we would have liked Brussels as much if we'd stayed downtown. The neighborhood eatery we wandered into the first night really was for the locals. There was no English menu, the staff spoke only French. We ended up with a nice meal regardless.
We went to the Royal museums of fine art of Belgium, and it was really large. After almost two weeks on the road, we didn't have the energy to explore all that was there.
We were masters of the Metro by now, but had wanted to take more surface-street buses. The problem is, there really weren't any available. The hotel guy gave us weird looks when we asked what bus goes to downtown the first day we were there. They mostly rely on the extensive metro, and a few trams to get around. We just wanted to see more of the city, instead of staring at concrete walls underground. Brussels is more car-oriented than the other cities we visited.

The Horta museum was a nice find. I use that word loosely, because we had a pickle of a time finding it. Horta was a designer/architect that pretty much started the Art Nouveau style. His home was a showcase of his talents. Very over-the-top dramatic designs, but had an organic feel to them. http://www.hortamuseum.be/

From staying in Bed & Breakfast's in the other cities, the impersonal nature of hotels were a welcome thing. Now, the B&B people were great, but after a time, we didn't want to be charming and sociable just to get breakfast. We continued in this vein when we got back to Amsterdam. Stayed at a hotel right by Centraal Station so we could catch the train to Schipol airport easily. Meeting up with our ex patriot friend for breakfast and a final walk around (after finding out that the pancake house we went to wasn't open in time for us) was a nice capper to our vacation. He's going to be living there for at least three more years, maybe we can get back there to see him. Even with the crummy exchange rate, our first European vacation together was a grand success. I wonder where we'll end up for our next big trip overseas?

I suppose it's time for the pictures link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/DragonDan108/Europe2008

Wow, it's May

This is my birth-month. My party plans included me spending an evening at home. Alone (well, Vladimir is always around). Sounds boring and lame, but that was exactly what I wanted. More on this later.
To say my 40th year was tumultuous is an incredible understatement. It started with a big blow-out party, thrown by my sweetie. She had gathered a bunch of friends and family together and I had my first surprise birthday party. It was grand! It showed me that people actually care for me. Maybe a strange thing to say, but my eyes weren't open for many years.

There were some un-fun things that happened. Leah moved to Denver for the summer, working as a travel nurse. I came down with a case of shingles in February (it was actually the same day that Dax started his trip to Asia and India).
But there were mostly good times and good things happening. Family is doing well, my new niece and grand-niece are growing quickly. I have good friends and am making new ones. My business was increasing exponentially at the end of 2007, but now is declining somewhat due to economy and very determined competition. If things go as planned, we should be moving into a new building in a couple months. We outgrew our current office two years ago. I'm excited and frightened all at the same time by this.

I got to see some new cities around the country, and even took a vacation in Europe with L. We had some fantastic adventures, saw beautiful cities and sampled some very good food. I'm doing a write-up of our little trip in another posting. It ain't great journalism, but it might not turn out so badly.

In late December, L officially moved in with me. This is a whole new chapter in my life! I've thoroughly enjoyed it, but I probably get on Leah's nerves. We're all weird people in our own little ways, and sharing an environment brings 'em all out. Makes life interesting!

Speaking of chapters, one is closing for me. I've sold my motorcycle recently. I hadn't really ridden it seriously for many months. I don't know, it doesn't seem as important or appealing to me now. I've owned several bikes, this one was my favorite. Doubt I'll ever own one again. I guess my interests are changing. They seem to be pointed more towards photography these days. I bought a Canon D-SLR earlier this year in preparation for our trip. I've always liked taking photos, and even seem to have an eye for composition (from time to time). Only owning point-and-shoot cameras up to this point has made this upgrade quite the challenge. Soon after purchasing it, I attended a mid-level photography class to learn how to use it. Reading many books, magazines and online information has helped with the technical side of it. I just need experience now. Wasn't terribly happy with the results of the Europe pictures. I will get better with time, I hope. Maybe I do need that new lens...

The end of my 40th year held great change again. Coming back from Europe, I caught a strange cold. At least I was healthy during the trip! Leah has moved to San Francisco for the summer, travel nursing again. I hope this hospital treats its staff better than the Denver assignment. My 41st birthday party? It was just me and my cat, Vladimir. After so much traveling, getting over a cold, and L leaving town, I really wasn't in a mood to celebrate. I just wanted some time to relax and reflect. It was a good night. I picked up my guitar for the first time in a few months. It's time for me to reconnect with my wire-and-wood friend.

I've always known how important friends and family is, but this year made this more apparent. With very few exceptions, we can't do it on our own. We need encouragement and support from those we love and trust to push us forward. I guess I'm saying that I am doing okay. I am happy with where I am, an am looking forward to seeing my plans come together.