vaguely specific

Considering our complete lack of planning and preparation for the trip, (Ron was given a choice Saturday morning, "Get me out of here or ......")we didn't do too badly but it seems no matter how long I live in Europe this sort of industrial countryside is something I just can't get used to. We ended up planting ourselves at Benrath in a small hotel with a terrace overlooking the Rhine. If you sat facing Cologne you couldn't see the chimney stacks further up the river, if you squinted you couldn't see the caravan park on the other side, if you drank enough weisse weijn the thronging day-trippers greyed-themselves out.

Behind the hotel was the Schloss Benrath accessorised with forest, gardens, lakes, playground, swans, acorns and a woodpecker. Not bad!

In Cologne itself we limited our visit to the Cathedral and a walk along the river to the outdoor Antique market. It was a shame to miss out on the museums some of which I was really keen to see but we wanted to make sure it was an enjoyable holiday for Jacob as well so every morning and afternoon was spent wandering through the forest and exploring the castle grounds. Even better was the weather. We had three days of mostly-sun and quite mild temperatures. Jacob was in his element chasing field mice across the forest-floor, dragging enormous sticks back to the hotel and screaming "ccak cak" at everything with wings.

Because we were staying in a hotel and not an apartment we were able to do that rare-thing, eat dinner without Jacob. The hotel gave us a room close to the restaurant from which our baby-mobile would work and after feeding Jacob and putting him to bed we would sneek out to the restaurant and let loose. We took hours to eat dinner and sat over a glass of wine till all hours of the night (what hey! EVEN 9.00pm some nights!)

What did suprise us was the cost of food in Germany. It was so cheap! Three of us eating and drinking in a decent restaurant left us double-checking the bill and giggling with guilt as we walked away.

Jacob as usual charmed the pants of everyone and even made a little german friend, Lars, in the grounds of the castle. The stuffed animals in the hotel restaurant were a bit challenging but the many water features were the stuff of an 18 month's old dreams. The staff proved to be very child friendly and happily filled his bottle with milk, heated up his meals and made special cheese sandwhiches all at no charge.

We were both a bit surprised by how relaxing even this short holiday was and very very very glad we did it when shortly after crossing the border back into the Netherlands we ran into a mist which grew closer and thicker the nearere we got to Amsterdam. By the time we ran into our first traffic jam the wet grey sky was back down around our ears where it belongs.

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March 14, 2005

Les Gets

We're back from Les Gets. Until I get time to post something about it here are some photos.

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November 08, 2004

Istanbul

We spent the weekend in Istanbul. Or on route to-and-from Istanbul as it turned out, but they do say it's the journey that matters! It certainly did this weekend, and hence our time actually IN Istanbul was a tad more limited than we expected.

One of the most enjoyable things about our stay was the Pera Palas hotel, a sort of kitsch-art-nouveau-oriental-architectural-theme-park for adults.

Once a luxury hotel it has achieved just the right level of shabbiness for maximum character effect. It lacks all the bland enhancements of most modern luxury hotels and has accrued its own quirks. No two rooms are the same, either by design or through the passage of time, or the passage of damp. And the place is full of hidden surprises and discoveries.

The other element providing character at the Pera Palas is the staff. Competent enough to provide the services you want (mostly.....) but clumsy and inept enough to ensure that the place never has the feel of a too-well-oiled machine. The best comparison is with my Amsterdam bike, it will always get you where you want to go, it just makes strange noises while doing so.

Having in the end a limited time actually in Istanbul we settled for as many of the obvious tourist destinations that we could reasonably fit into one day via Bugaboo. The Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sophia, The Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market. All of these were fabulous to see first-hand and we are already planning a return trip to see them again and all the things we DIDN'T have time for.

But Istanbul has another, more exciting side for the thrill-seekers out there. No theme park ride will ever be as exciting or terrifying as finding a way to the other sie of the road armed with only an arm-waving husband and a pusher in Istanbul traffic. "Spot-the-safe-place-to-cross-the-road-with-a-baby" is a game that could obviously go on for days in Istanbul. As could "find-the-route-back-to-your-hotel-where-you-don't-have-to-push-the-pram-and-baby-on-the-road-in-the-traffic". Fortunately the Oriental Bar at the Pera Palas is always waiting there at the end of the return journey (and the top of the Pera Hill) tp provide some badly-needed relaxation and refreshment.

What made our rather-insane-rush-trip enjoyable was the people of Istanbul who were amazingly friendly, alert-in-traffic, helpful and thank God, so obsessed with Jacob, (or Jakop, as he was renamed) that they would do practically anything for us. Well, almost anything. We did have to carry our own luggage after the bell boys had descended on Jacob to carry him aloft to our room. Luckily we got him back.

Some photos are here.

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November 04, 2004

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November 01, 2004

The Achterhoek

We spent the weekend in the East, the 'achterhoek' to be precise, or literally, "the back corner" for those who aren't familiar with all of the Netherlands nooks and crannies. (East, in Twente, near the German border, where the girls look like milkmaids from Vermeer paintings and the cows have breathing room). Ron's parents were spending a week in a holiday park, as much of the Netherlands is wont to do. Its a culture thats still a bit of a shock to me but I can enjoy anything for a weekend! The autumn colours were amazing, and the famous Dutch light was everywhere, although I've still got no idea how to capture this on film, or pixels. I did manage the obligatory-autumn-berries shot though! Some photos here.

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September 21, 2004

Hola!

So here are the photos from our trip to Spain, or at least some of them.

Because besides these, taken with a series of disposable cameras and with all the frustration you'd expect to feel when you thought you'd be using a Canon G2 instead, there were about 160 other photos, taken with said G2 but unfortunately stolen by the same asshole who stole our camera. I don't mind too much about the camera but the memory cards with the photos..........

I still beat my head on the table everytime I think of it. It was the first trip since I had Jacob where I was getting back into enjoying taking photos again. Maybe because he's older, or we're more trained, but it was the first time I was relaxed enough again to devote the thought and energy to the photos rather than what Jacob was doing, needing, wanting. And they were soooooooooo good! easy to say when no one is going to see them now, but there were some doosies in that lot!!

The one nice thing about these is that the crappy quality of the disposable camera gives some of them a painterley look which I quite like. Enhanced with Photoshop's "Adjust auto levels" and they're plastic-fantastic!

So here they are, from Valencia de Don Juan to the southern part of the Picos de Europa and back south again to Madrid, as framed by Jacob naturally!

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September 06, 2004

Thanks!

So, we are home again....damn! I hate the end of a holiday! Spain was wonderful, despite some unplanned excitement over lost passports, money, tickets, credit cards and camera. Hopefully sometime tomorrow I'll get time to blog about our trip and then who knows, get the wedding and Spain photos sorted?

But in the meantime, we would like to thank the following people who all went to so much trouble to make sure that what could have been a horrible holiday-spoiling accident became nothing more than a few days inconvenience and a nice-way-to-get-to-know-the-locals!

Thankyou to:
-Sonja and Juan in the Netherlands who took the calls from the Spanish police in Valencia de Don Juan and worked out to whom the bag they were talking about belonged!
-Peter and Vanusa in Amsterdam who phoned half of Ijsselstein to track down Ron's parents.
-Corrie and Wim who passed on messages and blocked cards.
-the officers at the Guardia Civilia in Valencia de Don Juan, Leon, Spain who telephoned the Netherlands after our bag was found, not once but twice in an effort to find the owners.
-and last but definetley not least, to Anne-Marie Flynn, Gonzalo Vereterna, Marcos Garcia Granda and Carlos Gonzalez Bodega at the Guardia Civilia in El Pinto, Asturia, Spain who spent hours with us on Saturday when we reported our bag lost, arranged new airline tickets, arranged somewhere for us to stay, lent us their football pools winnings so we could buy food etc, admired Jacob and generally sorted out all our problems until money transfers etc could be arranged on Monday.
-and also to their colleagues at Guardia Civilia in El Pinto who accompanied us on Monday to the Post Office and bank in Cudillero so that we could collect our money without ID and who rang the Guardia Civilia in Valencia de Don Juan after we got the message from Holland about our bag.

Cudillero, Asturia, Spain! There can't be a nicer place to find yourself stateless, moneyless and without a roof over your head!

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August 12, 2004

Black Ban

We are slowly inching our way back to Melbourne, if only in bureaucratic terms at this point in time but we expect sometime next year to be ready to move back.

And then I read this sort of thing.

Wearing colours and pastels? Dus, out with the atlas schatje, we're finding somewhere else to move to!

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May 18, 2004

Sicily

Dus, we are back from Sicily, a day later than planned and a lot poorer after missing our booked flight back to Amsterdam and having to buy another at short notice.

Jacob is sporting a tan and one white tooth, just like a lot of the Sicilians who made such a fuss of him all week! He also seems to have grown several inches in one week!

More to come later.................

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April 14, 2004

Wide open spaces......

Its official! We're moving house!

Despite having the sweetest little flat in the universe the emphasis is on the word little. At 45m2 (and that includes the attic room) its always been cosy, but now with Jacob threatening various stages of impending mobility its just becoming downright impractical. Almost by accident last week we saw something nearly twice as big, 75m2, in the same area and wonder of wonders, with a bath!

I think the statistical chance of finding a flat in de Pijp that has a bath, at any price, must be less then 2%.

Anyway, its not nearly so sweet and we lose our two balconies, but it's in the same area, for the same price and with twice the space.

List of luxuries the new flat will bring with it:
-there is enough space in the hall to leave the pusher downstairs instead of dragging it up 4 flights of stairs.
-a real bathroom with a real bath
-a kitchen, with a full-sized fridge for Jacob's growing collection of jars-of-pureed-things
-a bedroom that that can accomodate a bed where Ron's feet won't hang over the edge
-we can use our laptops and eat at the table
-Jacob can learn to crawl without running into the next wall

The flat is also in a really good location, right near the Sarphatiepark, very close to the Albert Cuyp (but the stallholders stop short of our end of the street with storing their market stalls), and dangerously close to Pepinnos, the best ice-cream in Amsterdam. Still, I'm going to miss our little plein, Jan and the boys, Gambrinus and De Tapperij!

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March 30, 2004

Copenhagen

Just to make a point of the bleeding obvious, its different when you travel with a baby. And thus, you see and notice different things about places. Like for instance, the size of the prams. I have never seen such big prams as those used by nearly everone in Copenhagen! These were the Jeep Chrysler/Mack Truck versions of the pram world. In Amsterdam they wouldn't even fit on the footpath, and would probably be considered big enough to house a small family here in the Pijp! Any of them were certainly bigger than our bathroom. (And there are people out there who think I'm joking about that!) We stayed at the Hotel Valberg which proved very relaxing, despite the ten flights of stairs and a very scary lift! Copenhagen itself was lovely and in the grip os some sort of spring-fever, the temperature during the day soaring to 2 or 3 degrees above zero! Jacob seems to have accepted that much of his life is going to be spent sitting outside pubs (!) and proved very resilient when trying out various unidentifiable Danish babyfoods. I don't think he's been eating reindeer. We saw lots of kitsch candles with Mary and the Prince on them in the leadup to the wedding, lots of nice yellow houses to cheer everyone up through the long winter months, lots of pointy pixie-ish faces and a tendency to wear hats which emphasized this and lots of fairytale buildings. I mean the Stock exchange has dragons-claws on its roof?! The photos are here.

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March 24, 2004

ode to french hotels

I love French hotels.

More specifically, I love old, slightly (OK, sometimes very) shabby French hotels that still have a hint of "hotel-life" about them. What you might lose in facilities, and usually in the bathroom, you will more than gain in character (and often that will be in the bathrom too!).

French hotels we've loved are;

No.1 The Rhone Hotel, Sechelles.
The place reeked of a 70's renovation, but even then, one that paid more attention to the 1870's than the 1970's. The cistern in the toliet was a gleaming work of art from the 1920's, the bath was an enormous and fantastic celebration of early twentieth century engineering, the bedrooom a celebration of flock and french decoration, the loungeroom a brown horror and the terrace overlooking the Rhine the perfect spot to spend hours killing a few glasses of the local wine and filling in one postcard. The owner was French, cynical and married to an Australian, (well there you go), his staff French and surly except for the woman who did breakfast who was unremittingly talkative......in French, and one lost boy from the American mid-west doing his obligatory year-in-Europe. As a joke they let him cook for the tourists and this was the only French hotel I've ever stayed in where the food was average. The key to our room had a kangaroo keychain, the bed was propped up by a pile of paperbacks and the window sill was the perfect place to keep our very smelly Haute Savoie cheese that sustained us on our walks each day. That is until it packed its own bags and left.

No.2 Hotel Lion D'Or, Langres
This hotel was not quite so fascinating and our room had one of those horrible cabin-showers. But it was situated very pcturesquely by the River D'Or with charming (if they're in France and full of geraniums they're always charming, non?) window boxes and little fluttering flags. Further the breakfast room was the perfect example of a musty damp overheated glassed in terrace complete with slightly green light from the algae growing on the terrass glass. This led one to suspect that the trout swimming in the enormous aquarium had it slightly better than the guests. Until dinner time that is. Which as it turned out was what it was all about. Many of the guests were there for the trout fishing and the owner had bought the hotel specifically so he could cook trout for people. Which brings me to what was so good about the place. The most drop-dead gorgeous melt-in-your-mouth trout I've ever tasted in my life! I still can't drive past Dijon without a longing glance to the east, only a few kms in that direction....... And they might even have better rooms, ours was the last available so it was a case of beggars-can't-be-choosers.

No.3 Hotel Doree, Paris
The Hotel Doree on the Rues Barbes in Montmartre will go down in history with us as having the most comfortable beds in the universe. This was lucky as the bath was tiny, the walls cardboard thin and the rooms tiny, stuffy crimson-flock nightmares but we loved it. Even living with the owners art-work which is its raison d'etre (doubling as a gallery for the husband's paintings). They also had sensational croissants, fabulous staff and that gorgeous French butter. And they're in Montmartre, always a winner!

No.4 Hotel St Christophe, Neufchateu
We stopped here on the way back from Les Arcs. We were the only guests in the entire hotel where the heating was cranked up to a tropical 120F for our benefit. The food was microwaved, the shower not quite as clean as you'd like and we were promised that they would "worm" our baby bottles. It was fabulous............ Just the anti-dote to a week in Les Arcs!

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March 14, 2004

Les Arcs

Jacob had one of the more surprising weeks of his life this week when a two day car trip was followed by a week at 1800m at Les Arcs, where everything was white. Just when he got used to this, all the new strange people and french baby food, it was back in the car and another two days back to the Netherlands with a stop-off in Neufchateau in France.

More on that later.............

Descartes had it all wrong. According to Jacob its "I move therefore I am" or maybe its just the after effects of two days in a Maxi-cosi and a body full of white blood cells from a week at high altitude.

We have to stop feeding him.

When we got back from Les Arcs I found an email from Hasitha waiting complete with a photo of his son Kieran who is now three months old. Kieran is very handsome although I'd be worried if I was Hasitha, he also looks very determined!

And today is Uncle Benny's Birthday!

Happy Birthday Ben

from Jacob, Faith and Ron! Gefeliteerd Jonge!

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February 21, 2004

carnaval

It is carnaval again in the Netherlands. When, south of the Rhine, you can't walk the streets without running into people who've spent three days straight pub-crawling in fancy dress singing oompy-poompy songs! North of the Rhine things are a bit quieter. Except in Ijsselstein that is, where, defying all geographic conventions the Apeluiders are busy celebrating carnaval with the best of them.

In Ijsselstein Carnaval has its own peculiar twist and somehow its all confused with a monkey from the 14thC. I'm sure all the beer thats flowed since has had a bit to do with it too. You can even listen to Ijsselstein specific Carnival songs.

Meanwhile in Brazil, 1.5 million people flooded the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

Here in Amsterdam we settled for the madness of Prenatal on a Saturday and bought Jacob a box. A round box. Gek genoeg!

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December 09, 2003

terschelling

This weekend was the annual visit to Terschelling, with a few small changes. Not least amongst them was Jacob. (Who bought that baby with them?) For Jacob it was a big weekend, his first time away from home,
his first time on a boat, his first time on a bus, first time in a taxi and first time in a kidcar. Not to mention first time in the Walvis Cafe! So predictably, there was also the first tantrum. Overall though he proved himself once again, the easiest, sweetest, most adorable baby ever, and the most gezellig! Not that we ever doubted it!

Despite the awful weather we did get one chance to use the kidcar with the bikes we had hired. Which was a good thing as we'd spent €30 to hire the damn thing for the weekend. Jacob seemed quite happy hurtling along in his little tent behind Ron and Vincent in turn. Just a shame we didn't get to use it more often!

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December 01, 2003

rivierenburt

Our first year in Amsterdam we lived in the Rivierenbuurt, on the Rijnstraat, just one of many streets named after rivers. The area was built as the initial stages of the "Plan Zuid" and amonsgt other charms has many nice examples of the Amsterdam School of architecure and planning, especially Berlage and De Klerk.

You can also see some of the area, past and present, in this online tour based on "De Zuidelijke Wandelweg".

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November 10, 2003

the melbourne cup

Yesterday the Melbourne Cup was held in Australia. Makybe Diva won and as usual there was a feelgood story (or two!)attached. 18 months ago the winning jockey, Glen Boss, had been facing paralysis after a nasty fall in a race. And like (nearly) all Melbourne Cup winners, the horse is owned by a tuna fisherman, thus the average bloke wins again! Except of course, he doesn't own it, he heads a syndicate who own it, and since when have Tuna fisherman had "average' incomes? Have you seen the price of tuna in Japan, which is where most Australian tuna goes?

Still, its all part of the myth of the Melbourne Cup. It was nice to hear that the 122,736 strong crowd gave Clare Lindop, the first woman to ride in the Melbourne Cup, the loudest acclaim at the introduction of the cup jockeys.

Sigh........Melbourne in springtime, sunshine, rain, jasmine, men in frocks and the Spring Carnival!

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November 01, 2003

st kilda pier

I can't believe St Kilda Pier kiosk burnt down yesterday. Unlike the extravagant architecture of English piers it was the very domesticity of St Kilda Pier kiosk that gave it its charm.

When I lived in St Kilda, sleepless summer nights could be spent sitting in the dark on the breakwater behind the kiosk, talking to the penguins, watching and waiting for the cool change to come over from Williamstown. I hope the penguins cope!

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August 10, 2003

pride parade

Saturday, in-between naps, we ventured out to meet up with some friends and see the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
The weather was great and so there were good crowds which provided some people-watching. The parade itself is always fun, just seems a bit slow and not quite as much to look at as other years, or am I imagining it? Maybe its standing around with this belly spoiling my perspective?

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May 08, 2003

paris in spring

Weeks ago now we went to Paris for four days, because its there, because its spring.....

This time we stayed in a small apartment on Rue St Severin in the Latin Quarter. The location was brilliant but noisy. The apartment is in the narrowest building in Paris, the Madeleine building, and is ten centuries old. It showed. Volataire once lived in our apartment and at times it smelt as if part of him still did, the floor sloped one way, the bed the other, it was reeking with character. (At least thats what I hope it was!)

Next time we will probably go back to Montmartre. our favourite "wijk", quieter and less tourists, but we still had a marvellous time. The weather was wonderful so we spent a lot of time sitting on the banks of the Seine, lounging in the Jardin de Luxembourg, we also caught up with the Friday night skate, shopped at the market on Rue St Germain, and took afternoon naps and did not much at all. Geweldig!

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May 01, 2003

april in paris

We spent four days in May in Parijs which was just as wonderful a city as all the cliches say it is. We stayed in Montmartre in a small dark room with possibly the most comfortable bed in the universe, spent a lot of our time climbing stairs, went to some anti-Le Pen demonstrations (which were being held daily), shopped, discovered Jean Louis Murat, Adelscott beer and the limitations of Doc Martens as walking boots. We were lucky enough to see the "La Revolution Surrealiste" at the Pompidou, which was like Disneyland for grown-ups, all the famous images and icons in one place including scenes from Bunuels L'Age D'or.

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oh Barcelona!

At Easter we went to Barcelona for four days and lucked out with mostly sunny weather. We managed to walk ourselves to exhaustion covering most of the city, the Parc Guell and the harbour and Montjuic on foot. We found some amazing graffiti, but mostly just enjoyed looking at the architecture. Obviously the Gaudi buildings, but also the decorated facades and balconies north of the city.

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April 01, 2003

le petit pierre

May is the season for long weekends in Holland so with Hemelvart dag falling on a Thursday and with a day off work on the Friday we decided to go to Alsace, do some camping, follow the wine route, visit some castles, climb some hills, just be outdoors somewhere where the trees don't grow in straigjht lines.........

Well, as things turned out we never unpacked the tent, swapped the wine for Alsatian beer, and spent the whole time so far north we were practically in Germany. La Petit Pierre, a small town perched on the top of a mountain in the heart of the "Parc Naturel Regional des Voges du Nord" ended up being our first and last stop.

Sorounded by forest La Petit Pierre is at the top of a mountain and the starting and finishing point for dozens of walks throughout the national park. All the walks end with a long steady climb upwards, pretty tough going when you've been living in flat Holland so long your legs go weak at the sight of a speed hump!

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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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February 01, 2003

indy junior

I've been experimenting with Indy Junior. Its not quite finished yet, but here you can see a map with various places we've been on it. It uses a Flash and XML file and is very simple to use and configure, and very nice to play with!

I'm yet to finish it but you can see what you think so far.

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plenty in twente

We spent Pinkster weekend in Ootmarsum with Ron's parents. Twente is a lovely area for cycling and the weather was practically perfect. The pregnancy thing though did make itself felt, I found 35kms was about my limit for an enjoyable cycle. After that I was just too tired. Still, more time to site in cafes and eat ice-cream and german apple strudel! And what I must look like on a bike I can't imagine, this belly
seems to be getting bigger every day!

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barcelona again

There are some places you can never go to too often! We took Corrie and Wim to Barcelona for a few days as a wedding anniversary present. They haven't seen the city before and enjoyed it very much. We took them up to Park Guell for a picnic, to our favourite ice-cream shop in the Barre Gothic and to our favourite Tapas bar. They strolled along the beach at Barcelonetta, saw a famous Dutch footballer who now plays for Barcelona in a cafe, (don't ask me!)and relaxed on a cruise of the harbour and coastline. Oh, and bought some beautiful glass ware.... And marvelled at the food in the market...

I think they liked it!

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January 19, 2003

ice

Holland being neither cold nor dark enough for us we fled to Reijkjavik for a long weekend.

The little we saw of Icelandwas stunning, snow-covered lava-landscapes, (apparently astronauts come here to practice "being-on-the-moon"), lovely clean fresh air, long, wide distant horizons, space, and albeit only for a few short hours per day, beautiful soft light. Oh, and really nice water!

We staggered slowly through the streets of Reikjavik on the icey pavements, clutching each other in horror at the prices in the shops, tried the local Viking beer which was served in a pint glass but to our relief was both cold and tasty. Ate an awful lot of fish but were never really hungry enough to go for reindeer, let alone ram's testicles.

The coloured corrugated iron buildings of Reijkavijk had some interesting quirky decorative features, the Cathedral is great, like a huge organ and absolutely beautiful inside. Definetley less is more.

And despite all the hype the Blue Lagoon is really as good as they say it is, especially when its snowing. The only thing we really missed was seeing the Northern Lights which we weren't able to do because of the weather. A bitter disapointment but also a good excuse to go back!

Oh, and Icelandair has Aveda soap in the toilets, and some very groovy Muzak. Thought I'd woken up in a Peter Stuyvesant commercial for a while when we landed back at Schiphol!

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December 15, 2002

clockwork orange

There's a lot to be said for Glasgow

We enjoyed the Lighthouse, the Cathedral and Necropolis, the Burrell Collection, Pollock House and Park, the hippy cows. Kibble Palace was magical from the inside with the soft mildewy light. We overdosed on Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art library lived up to its reputation as one of the 5 must-see architectural sites in the world. An Leabhar Mor or The Great Book of Gaelic at the Museum of Modern Art was an amazing anthology of poets, artists and calligraphers.

The cafes, pubs, bars and restaurants were brilliant. The Ballet Boyz at the Theatre Royal put on a great show. The fireworks and Christmas lights in George Square provided a fun ending to a perfect weekend away. And yes it was cold but most of the time the sun shone brilliantly.

We did our best with the local beer, Tennent. The fact that we found it undrinkable is no slur on Glasgow, its a "british beers thing" in general. Aside from a few select ales our puny Australian/Dutch beer-genes can't drink this alcoholless-tasteless-swampy-stuff.

But the best thing of all was the underground. If Jules Verne had designed a machine in which to make the journey to the center of the earth then it would have borne some resemblance to this. Otherwise it could just as well have been the train Snow-white’s dwarves used to get down to the mines each day.

A renoavtion at the end of the 1970's earned it the nickname "Clockwork Orange" but has not done much to hide its Victorian roots. A combination of a victorian imagination and a fairy-tale railway built for the little people, the underground manages to cleverly disguise itself as a bona-fide public transport system. With wee little carriages, wee little tunnels and wee little seats.

Which brings me to another really good thing about Glasgow. At least 50% of the poulation are shorter than me! (After living in the Netherlands two years this means a lot!)

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December 09, 2002

very nice

A couple of weeks before Christmas we went down to Nice for the weekend.

We saw a very expressive exhibition of sculptures and design by Barry Flannagan at the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain . The Musée also had an interesting Yves Klein collection.

We discoverd Socca, the local thing-to-do with chick-peas, and washed it down with the local table wines.

Spent hours wandering around the old town and basically not doing much at all, whiah was what it was meant to be about after all.

It may seem strange for a French city to make you home-sick for Australia but the Promenade des Anglais reminded us of nothing more than the Esplanade and Beaconsfield parade between St Kilda and Port Melbourne and we spent a lot of the weekend humming Paul kelly's "From St Kilda to Kings Cross".

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September 21, 2002

france Alsace

Ron and I left Amsterdam for our nine days holiday with no real plans beyond getting to France and seeing what happenned. We followed this plan meticulously. The long and boring description is below, the photos are here.

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July 17, 2002

almost berlin

Berlin was just never meant to happen.

Back in April we decided to go to the Love Parade
in Berlin in July. From the start it has been one of those trips where before you even left home you've been having a hard time. Nothing was straightforward, nothing went right the first time.

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July 01, 2002

valkenburg

Ron and I went down to Valkenberg for the weekend where his parents are taking their zommer vakantie. Valkenberg is unusually pretty for a dutch town, it has the benefit of hills and trees and hence is also very popular. It is the perfect place from which to go on walks or bike rides through the countryside.

Coincidentally it was also the first weekend of summer weather (25 -20 celcius)that we've had this year so it was very pleasant to be able to be outside again, warm, sunny, blue skies, heaven!

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June 01, 2002

a walk along the amstel

On Sunday afternoon we walked home along the Amstel and having a brand new digital camera of course took a photo of everything that moved, plus a lot of things that weren't going anywhere. The houseboats are always nice to look at and we did see one for sale, which since we are looking for a new flat at the moment has started an interesting train of thought....... They do say that owning a houseboat is like throwing money into the river but who knows?

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February 01, 2002

het amsterdamse bos

On the weekend we rode our bikes to the Amsterdam Forest, (de Amsterdamse Bos) to look at some of the Amsterdam School bridges there.

The forest is relatively new being built late in the 19th century and then redeveloped eary in the 20th century to keep pace with the growth of Amsterdam in the south. There are 64 bridges designed by Pieter Kramer, one of the best known of the Amsterdam School architects, and a dozen or so that are easily accessible have been renovated recently. Being autumn it is also a good time to see lots of mushrooms.

The weather was perfect for wandering through the woods, clear and dry, so very cold but we were just happy it wasn't raining!

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devil children

Amsterdam features much socialist-inspired statuary and artwork, the workers bringing in the sheaves, shoulders to the barrel, etc etc, some by the Amsterdam School, some not. Children also feature strongly
in many of these interpretations of the socialist utopia, sometimes, they end up looking downright weird. For instance this little lad, single handedly holding up a horse. Besides the menacing expression on his face the only explanation for his abilities is clearly satanic powers.

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