Evil Construction Banner

Did you notice the giant poster above the boat in the previous post? It's a huge banner in front of the train station covering some construction and it's really creepy. None of the people are happy to have their photos taken and some of them look like they just might kill you (like the guy in the sleeveless shirt) (click to enlarge):


Jane was particularly wary of the redheaded guy, who, curiously, looks a lot like Rob's brother:


So, Drew, seriously. Quit stalking us. You're creeping us out...

Cruising the Canals

The most popular tourist attraction in town is the canal tour and this weekend we took advantage of the warm weather and joined Jane on a tour through town. The tour is great because it's only about an hour long (so you never feel like you're stuck on a boat) and you see enough of the city to get you interested to go explore it later. We even managed to learn a little. This particular tour was prerecorded and it was bizarre and disorienting to hear all the street names and canals we've struggled to learn translated into English.

Here's a typical houseboat in front of a row of canal houses:


It's tough to make them all out, but there are seven bridges in this picture (click picture to enlarge):


This is the NEMO building, which is the (kid-themed) science museum. Apart from looking really cool, the top of the building has a café with tiered seating and during the summer it's a great place to sit in the sun, drink a cool beer, and enjoy a rare high view over the city:


We had a great time and highly recommend a tour (though the absolute best way to see the city is via bike). They also offer dinner cruises, but we wouldn't mind checking out the wine tour, too...

Bruges Redux

This weekend we returned to Bruges with Jane (before sending her off on her own to Paris). Bruges is such a beautiful city and it's famous for beer, chocolate, fries, and waffles. How can you go wrong? Here, Erika and Jane talk shop with the chocolatier at Galler's:


This time we stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast run by a retired rancher and his wife. Check out the website for pictures. We highly recommend it to anyone traveling through Bruges.

The Month of Jane-uary

We're celebrating the new year with our first guest, Jane. Jane is visiting from Portland and will be staying with us between her many trips throughout Europe this month. We've enjoyed taking her out to some of our favorite restaurants and she's enjoyed the various museums and shops in the city. And she taught Rob a very valuable lesson- he had the brilliant idea to throw her on a bike and take her into the city center on her first day, when the city can be a little rough on newcomers on bikes and, more importantly, Jane hadn't ridden a bike since she was 8! She managed to survive, but still hasn't completely mastered the art of braking without hand-brakes. The look on her face here pretty much says it all:


In her first week, she's visited the modern art museum, the giant Reichsmuseum, and the beautiful town of Haarlem. This weekend, we'll travel together to Bruges to gorge on chocolate, waffles, and beer, and then she's off to Paris for a few days. In the meantime, we've got her set up in the "Jane Wing" of the living room:


In addition to touring the local cafés and restaurants, Erika and Jane have been cooking up a storm. Jane made homemade strawberry jam for us and Erika and Jane used the new pasta maker to whip up an unbelievably good lasagna:



It's been great to have her here and hopefully she'll recruit some more visitors for us when she returns to Portland.

We Make-a da Pasta

Last night we tried out Erika's new Christmas present, the pasta maker. And when we say "we," we mean "Erika." Rob did turn the pasta maker crank for a while after Erika's arm got tired, but mostly his job is to hand her the stuff on the top shelf of the cabinet. To his credit, he's pretty good at that. Anyway, thanks to Rob's Mom for the great gift. Here's Erika in action:

Also notice that Rob is working the pasta maker while taking the photo. Multitalented, that guy. After you cut the pasta, you dry it on the handy rack.

And finally, add sauce. We went with one of our favorites, a Pink Vodka Sauce:

Buon appetito!

...and we're back.

Happy New Year! We hope everyone has had a great holiday break and is recovering from last night's festivities. New Year's Eve in Amsterdam is a pretty big deal and today the streets are red with the scraps of the thousands of fireworks set off last night. We celebrated with some friends and several hundred strangers on a big party boat in the port. As we take the day to recover, here are some pictures from our big trip to Austria.

The trip was fantastic. Although we didn't get any fresh snow, the skiing (and boarding) was great and the sun was always out. Somehow, we managed to ski for 5 of the 6 days we were there, which wore us down, but also helped us burn off the calories from all the good Austrian food and beer. We stayed in a nice hotel at the base of the mountain and met our friends every day for breakfast and dinner and were served by our waitress, who was a hilariously loopy Dutch woman who had never waitressed before and was learning on the fly while working about 20 tables. But somehow it was great.


We hit the mountain pretty hard the first two days and celebrated Christmas Eve at the hotel with all the other guests. They had a tree lighting ceremony and one of the hotel owners read a 12 page story in German about the Littlest Angel. It took forever. Afterwards, everybody sang some carols in German (they helpfully handed out lyrics) and we had a huge Christmas dinner. A couple things about this picture: We were very impressed when they lit actual candles on the tree- don't think that would happen in an American hotel- but we were blown away when the owner started lighting the sparklers. Yeah.


We took Christmas day off and walked through town, did some snow-shoeing, and called our families. Here's Erika trudging through the snow:



We spent the last three days skiing and boarding and eating and drinking. It was a great trip and we're looking forward to more skiing while we're over here. Check out our Flickr link for more pictures.