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March 21, 2003
portugal
Last week, sandwhiched in-between horrible colds, Ron and I went to Portugal for five days. We managed to avoid the worst tourist spots and spent most of some time on the west coast then headed inland through Cuba, Evora and Marao before heading back south to Faro via the eastern Spanish border. We saw "the rain in spain", gorged ourselves on sardines, figs, chocolate and almonds. Only preganancy prevented me from doing the same with the local wines and cheeses! The photos are here
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March 19, 2003
val thorens
Our week in Val Thorens was fabulous. Val Thorens is the highest ski resort in France at 3000m with the greatest area of pistes. The weather was great with brilliant sun every day of the week. I was incredibly lazy and spent a lot of time lying on various terraces in the sun, Ron was a lot busier, snowboarding his way over most of Val Thorens and beyond, with 'tochts' down to Courcheval and beyond.
Funnily enough our week was a lot more Dutch than French, since we went with a group of Dutch friends. In fact it was more Dutch than our daily life in Amsterdam! We ate primarily Dutch food, went mostly to a Dutch bar and generally managed to ignore the fact that we were in France. Who says colonisation is dead? From the plethora of English and Dutch bars in tourist spots around the world it seems to be a hard habit to drop.
And here are the photos.
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March 01, 2003
carnaval
It is Carnaval time again in the Netherlands this weekend. Here in Amsterdam (Nord-Holland) Carnaval is not celebrated but it is in our second home, Ijsselstein. Despite being on the wrong side of the Rhine Ijsselstein celebrates Carnaval with the best of them, with businesses closing and drunken revelry being the order of the day.
What I didn't know (despite having survived one weekend's carnaval in Ijsselstein) is that the strange story of Kees the monkey lives on in the Carnaval tradition. For the duration of Carnaval Ijsselstein becomes "apenstad", and the large ape-ish mascot hidden on an empty field behind one of the primary schools takes centre-stage amidst some dedicated apeluiers.
Now how did I miss that!
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