Erika and Rob Go Dutch

On the Road in Spain

2010-06-23T14:02:00.005+02:00

It's been a whirlwind of a spring. We haven't posted anything since March (though most of you follow us through facebook these days), but we have been busy. We fly home to see Rob's brother get married and then Erika followed her stint in Taiwan with another trip to Cape Town. Rob joined her and we enjoyed a fantastic road trip along the Garden Route on the southern coast of South Africa. Once home, we settled in for the rest of the spring, summer, and our last remaining time in Amsterdam, which is just flying by. In May, we took advantage of our last big trip in Europe and headed to Spain.

We started in Madrid, where we very quickly assimilated into the culture, enjoying many afternoon naps and gorging on tapas. At one point, Erika thought Rob would figure out a way to eat ham at every meal. Between meals, we visited several museums and walked through the city. We stopped for a drink in the beautiful Plaza Mayor and people-watched. While we spent most of the time completely enthralled with Flamboyant Fat Spiderman, we really enjoyed the locals dressed as Chulos and Chulapas, who were equally adorable, whether they were 6 years old or 80. The outfits are worn in celebration of St. Isadore and the beginning of the bullfighting season.

After a wonderful night of tapas bar hopping with some Spanish friends, we headed to Seville. A gorgeous city (with more amazing food), Seville is lush with beautiful gardens and home to a beautiful cathedral and an old Moorish palace.

We finished our time in Seville with a traditional Flamenco show, which was a little bit touristy, but totally worth it anyway. The singing, dancing, and guitar playing was incredible.

We pushed south to Cadiz, a sun bleached city said to have been founded by Hercules (how cool is that?!). While Cadiz was lovely, we had more fun in nearby Jerez de la Frontera, which is the heart of the Spanish sherry country (the word 'sherry' is a deviation from the word 'Jerez').

Cadiz

Needing a break from a few days on the road, we stopped in Estapona, a little beach town on the southern coast. We enjoyed a day in the sun, a quick trip to the spa, and some of the best seafood we've ever had. After the nice break, we moved north to Ronda, stopping first in the beautiful village of Grazalema.

Grazalema is one of several Pueblos Blanca, or White Villages, which were established high in the mountains by farmers who were trying to avoid gangs of bandits. All the buildings are painted white and the villages look stunning beneath the craggy rocks. They're also a pain in the neck to get to, hence the whole avoiding the bandits thing.

Ronda is famously built on two cliffs with a massive bridge connecting the two sides of town. The bridge is quite beautiful, as is the view of the valley below.

For the last day of our trip, we stopped in Cordoba to visit the unbelievably beautiful Mezquita, a massive mosque-turned cathedral that dates back to the 10th century. Filled with stunning Muslim architecture and design alongside Catholic altars and imagery, the Mezquita is an amazing departure from most of the Giant European Churches we've seen during our time in Europe.

Finally, we spent one night in Toledo before flying home. Toledo is an ancient city, built on a hill, and the streets are so narrow that some buildings have had parts of the walls scooped out to allow cars to navigate. Naturally, we thought it would be a good idea to drive to our hotel, so Rob got first hand experience driving through town.

Our trip to Spain was an incredible experience and a great last big trip before we move home. And now, here's an elephant standing on its trunk:

Hong Kong

2010-03-09T03:39:00.005+01:00

In the footsteps of Erika’s grandfather, Erika’s work with her firm has provided the opportunities to see parts of the world we may not have otherwise explored. While the travel has its hardships, particularly for a pair of happy newlyweds, we know we’ll be able to look back on these years with fond memories.

The most recent escapade took Erika to Taipei, Taiwan where she spent about 8 weeks overall working her tail off. Even with all of that, she was able to see a bit of Taiwan and make it over to Hong Kong a couple times to check out her grandparents old stomping grounds and visit a friend that moved there from Amsterdam. Rob was even able to make a trip out East himself to see a bit of Taipei and then was able to spend a few days in Hong Kong.

The first trip to Hong Kong was over Thanksgiving weekend where Erika helped her friend Tina put together a proper Thanksgiving spread…with the turkey complements of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (it's in that tin).

Tina just so happened to live within walking distance of Grandma and Grandpa's old apartment on Tregunther Path so, on the last day in Hong Kong, Erika took a stroll up the “hill” (ah-hem – just short of a mountain). More than halfway up the Peak Tram, at the top of the vast and beautifully constructed cityscape, and at the base of the greenery that makes up the remainder of the steep Peak hills which reign over Hong Kong, it was apparent right away how Grandma and Grandpa could have called this home for so many years and it was nice to share in a bit of that history.

Both weekends in Hong Kong were filled with good eats (this was also true for Rob’s later visit to Hong Kong). It seems that you just can’t go wrong with food in that city…between dim sum, champagne brunch, secret kitchens and places you simply get a good feel about…there is great food lurking behind every street corner.

Overall, Hong Kong was quite the city and it has one of the most stunning skylines we think we’ll ever see. Whether you are looking at it from above…

Or below…

It’s a memorable one.

There is more to come on Taiwan and Bangkok which capped off the Eastern part of Rob and Erika's journey abroad.

A Swiss Christmas

2010-01-20T14:34:00.004+01:00

We celebrated Christmas this year with some friends by taking a trip to Switzerland. Rob's friend Don joined us and our Amsterdam friends, Brent and Ruth, for a week of skiing in the mountain village of Engelberg.

After an adventuresome day that included hours of flight delays and a race to catch the last train to town while lugging skis and suitcases and relying on Rob's ever-declining command of the German language, we arrived at our rented apartment around one o'clock in the morning and crashed. Of course, all the travel induced stress was forgotten when we got our first view of the mountain:

Engleberg is not a large resort, but the runs are very long and there were enough of them to keep us busy. One of the big draws to this part of Switzerland are its many fantastic off-piste (off-trail) runs, and while we decided we weren't up to the challenge, we certainly contemplated it:

The weather was a little harsh this year and throughout the week different areas of the mountain were shut down due to insanely high winds. Still, we skied plenty and filled our time with other activities. There's always apré ski:

Or a night time, torchlit snowshoe trek on the mountain:

Or Swiss Fondue:

While Ruth and Erika wowed us with many delicious meals, we had Christmas dinner at a nice restaurant in town. We had a wonderful time and felt so thankful to be able to share such a memorable Christmas with friends.

Budapest

2009-12-28T22:13:00.005+01:00

As we look forward to the new year, we're trying to take this week to catch up on some posting here. We've definitely dropped off from our earlier posting pace, but it's been such a busy year, with Erika in Africa for the better part of the first six months, the wedding, and Erika's recent work in Taiwan. Still, this year has been an other wonderful opportunity for us to travel a little bit. In November, we flew to Budapest with our friends, Pete and Azure, for a quick weekend of sight-seeing and, as always seems to be the case, amazing dining.

While Rob had been to Hungary before, neither of us had ever been to Budapest and we were excited to explore the city. We got in on a Saturday morning and wandered through the city, starting in the old Pest side where our hotel was, and working our way across the famous Chain Bridge into Buda. We had a late, delicious lunch and wandered without much purpose, taking in the beautiful buildings and river scene, so by the time we made it up the Castle Hill, or Vár, the museums and churches were closed. We wandered over to the Fisherman's Bastion, an old battlement on the land that is said to have been manned and defended by local fisherman during the Middle Ages. The bastion is incredibly well lit and gorgeous:

After a solid day of walking (and climbing up and down the Vár) we took a break on a cocktail-fueled river cruise along the Danube. The view from the river at night is astounding, though the glass windows prevented us (but not the obnoxious girls in front of us, whose camera flashes were blinding) from taking any good pics. Still, the boat ride was very educational and we'd recommend it to anyone visiting Budapest.

We finished off the first day with a truly incredible meal at the restaurant Klassz, which, in addition to fantastic food (who knew Hungarian food was so good?) had an extensive collection of Hungarian wines (who knew Hungarian wines were so good?).

Sunday began with another trip back across the Danube to visit the Cave Church, a, um, church in a cave that still serves mass and is run by an order of monks that date back to the 13th century. Outside the church is a statue of St. Stephen, a canonized king of Hungary who founded the state of Hungary in the 11th century, and who remains the symbol of the republic. That's cool and everything, but check out his crazy toes:

We made a sad, late attempt to get into the gargantuan Parliament building, but the English tour was sold-out well before we arrived. We settled for a quick pit stop at the "most beautiful McDonald's in the world" in one of the train stations, but despite the lovely light fixtures, we were unimpressed- the most beautiful McDonald's in the world still smells like french fry grease. Here's Parliament:

After two solid days of walking, you need a break. What better way to relax than in one of Budapest's famous spas? In pools of 100 degree (or warmer) natural spring water, we relaxed with 300 of our closest friends- it was a little crowded. Refreshed, we headed out for one last, memorable Hungarian dinner before returning home the next morning.

Ireland

2009-11-13T20:18:00.004+01:00

A couple weeks ago, Erika had some work in Ireland, so Rob flew up to join her for a quick weekend road trip. We originally planned to focus on a few, small areas, but quickly bit off more than we could chew. Erika's work was in Shannon, so Rob drove up from Cork (after enjoying the traditional Irish treat, Starbucks. There was a time when Rob would feel like a guilty, typical tourist for having a Starbucks, but after two years in a country where a take-away coffee is nearly impossible to find, some of the snob is wearing off).

We made our way through the gorgeous-even-in-the-overcast-fall-weather countryside to Galway, where we stayed in a fantastic bed and breakfast. We were planning to double back to the south after a morning in Galway, but our hostess convinced us to head north, into the area known as Connemara. The thing with Ireland is that it is beautiful everywhere, but each part is uniquely beautiful, so, if you're not careful you end up driving the entire island as you realize, "Oh, we're not too far from X, let's go check it out, too." This is a perfectly wonderful way to travel, but not if you have reservations 5 hours away.

Connemara is beautiful (how many times will we use 'beautiful' when describing Ireland?) and we had a great morning drive to the coast, along the only Irish fjord, in which dolphins are often found if you have the time to stop and look for them. We visited some lovely shops and saw a castle and Rob clapped like a six-year-old when our car was forced to stop for a passing herd of sheep: "It's just like the movies!"

We finally made it back to Galway for a late lunch (for some of the best chicken pot pie we've ever had) and then pushed on to the Cliffs of Moher. Unfortunately, two things happened then. One, we'd spent too much time (and daylight) in Connemara, and, two, the 'cute' picturesque, windy Irish roads caught up to us and we got a little carsick. So we raced to the cliffs, trying to reach them before sunset but also trying not to drive too fast. It was pretty stupid. We made it in time to see the cliffs and grab a photo, but just barely:

Finally, we continued on (after an insane GPS-inspired trip through several farms) to Kilarney. Though we'd originally intended to drive both the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula, we actually learned a lesson from the first day, and chose to just do the Ring of Kerry. The drive around the Ring of Kerry is absolutely breathtaking. The weather wasn't great for photographs, but we managed to get in a few.

Like our trip to Scotland, we just barely got a taste of Ireland and can't wait to get back. We ate well, the beer was phenomenal, the people were fantastic and the countryside is stunning. You just can't see it all in two days.

Prost!

2009-09-30T16:02:00.004+02:00

We spent the weekend in Munich at the Oktoberfest. It was fantastic! Rob forgot to pack the camera, so we relied on our friends, Paul and Simon, to capture a few pics for us.

Erika and Paul

A big group of folks from Amsterdam went down and one of them had the foresight to reserve a table months ago, which is key, since most visitors spend half their time there trying to squeeze in to a table. We enjoyed our own table on Friday, but were thrown in with the masses on Saturday. Though we didn't make it into one of the main tents, we managed to carve out a little space for ourselves. The Duffys, our friends from Germany, and several of their friends joined us and we got to play with the kids. Rob even spoiled Denali with a SpongeBob SquarePants balloon, a horn (which he made sure she kept for the car ride home), and a pony ride. He's clearly not afraid of being accused of buying her love.

The Oktoberfest was a lot of fun- we had several liters of beer and tons of delicious, fatty German food, some of which Rob even remembers eating.

It was Erika's first trip and she likened it to Vegas- a whole lot of fun, but you don't want to go every year and it takes a week to detox when you're done. And, at the end of the night, you have to carry Rob home.

Malaysia (Truly Asia!)

2009-09-20T14:20:00.003+02:00

For our honeymoon, we headed to Malaysia (Truly Asia) for some time on the beach. We stayed on the island of Langkawi, which is actually a group of 99 small islands, though we were on the largest of them. Malaysia (Truly Asia) is a beautiful country and the islands were blanketed with deep green forests covering the large hills and surrounding the many gorgeous waterfalls. Because of its location on the western side of the main Malaysian (Truly Asian) peninsula, Langkawi is sheltered from most of the normal monsoon rains, which is important if you're honeymooning near the beginning of monsoon season. Oh, and the lame (Truly Asia) joke is from the Malaysian tourism commercial that plays about 50 times a day on CNN International. When we told our friends in Amsterdam that we were going to honeymoon in Malaysia, the most common response was, "Truly Asia?"

The honeymoon was everything we wanted it to be, which is to say that it was incredibly relaxing. We took multiple trips to the spa for massages and sat on the beach or poolside and enjoyed many delicious cocktails. The food at the resort was fantastic, although we had our best meal in town at the Ramadan bazaar. That part of the country is primarily Muslim, so each evening a couple hours before sunset, little roadside stands and town markets spring up, selling amazing local food in preparation for the end of the daytime Ramadan fast. For something like 3 or 4 dollars, we bought a giant spread of grilled chicken, meatball dumplings, and several roti with unbelievably good dipping sauces. Roti is the local flatbread, which is fairly simple, but the sauces were out of this world. Here's one of the vendors frying up some roti:

Though we were content to sit in the sun and read (and enjoy a cocktail or three), we did manage to venture out a bit and explore some of the island. We took a tour of a few of the islands main waterfalls:

Our favorite event was a sunset dinner cruise we took one evening. The boat sailed around several of the small or uninhabited islands and the crew grilled and served us another awesome meal:

It was a wonderful honeymoon and we're excited about going back to that corner of the world and exploring more of Malaysia!

(Truly Asia!)

Erika and Rob Got Married

2009-09-10T13:46:00.006+02:00

What a blast: in a whirlwind month, we moved apartments in Amsterdam (now with more room for guests!), flew home, prepped for a wedding, got married, flew back and repacked, flew to Malaysia for a honeymoon, and returned home to unpack boxes and move into the new place just in time to host five visiting friends for a long weekend! Erika was on four continents in as many weeks and we spent almost 2 full days on airplanes.

But, wow, was it worth it. The wedding, if we can be so modest, was beautiful and just about perfect. The farm looked fantastic and the weather couldn't have been better for the ceremony. (Okay, we weren't prepared for the temperature to drop so quickly with the sunset, but we hope it wasn't too cold.) It was wonderful to see our friends and family and have such a great day together.

Erika looked absolutely gorgeous and Rob cleaned up okay, too. Photos are still coming in from everyone and we encourage you to share if you'd like. Our amazing photographers have compiled an initial gallery that can be found here. There's a nice slideshow and if you're interested in seeing the whole gallery, send us an email and we'll make sure you get access (both these photos are by Stickeen Photography).

Thanks again to everyone who helped make it the most wonderful wedding we could have hoped for! And, as always, if you need a little more Erika-and-Rob time, you're always invited to come see us here.

Moronathon 2009!

2009-07-09T21:10:00.007+02:00

We recently held our 2nd annual Moronathon here in Amsterdam. The Moronathon is a series of ten semi-athletic and semi-sober events designed to test strength, endurance, and your (lack of) ego. To give you a quick idea of what it's about, here's a video of some of last year's event:

This year was another rousing success. We started things off with a little pre-party to get everyone in the right frame of mind before heading down to the park. You'll notice we had t-shirts made. The 'I amoron' is a play on the city's tourism campaign, "I amsterdam."

The Moronathon kicks off with the first event, where each man punts a football and then attempts to chase it down and catch it. Everybody gets 5 punts and the person who has traveled the farthest wins. We score on a point system, with 5 points for 1st place, 3 for second, and 1 for third.

The second event was a crabwalk relay with cups of beer at each end. Each contestant crabwalked four lengths, downing a total of 2 cans of beer. The event was scored for time, with penalties added for spilled beer.

The third event was a 3-man race bouncing on exercise balls, as seen in the video. This was actually a better event last year, when the field was muddy and everybody had a hard time controlling the ball.

A new event this year, completely ripped off from a little girl Brian and Rob saw in the park during Queens Day, was the launching of a Dutch chocolate-covered marshmallow snack into the air by means of jumping onto a board and attempting to catch the snack in your mouth. Contestants got three attempts, it was much harder than it looked and it was insanely fun.

The scariest event was the egg toss. Since there were morons involved, the object of this egg toss was not to keep the egg intact, but to hit your opponent with it. Each man carried three eggs, and after starting 30 paces apart, the combatants would decrease the distance between each other for the next throw. It got a little brutal, and once the event was over, devolved into an all out egg war.

The egg war was followed by the hanging competition. Each man hung from a tree branch while the rest bombarded him with the exercise balls. This was followed by a disastrous event where we tried to throw a tennis ball up in the air, drop and do a push up, and then catch the tennis ball. This is not easy to do, and only one guy managed to catch his tennis ball. We won't be doing that event again next year.

We then moved to the Rodeo event where contestants tried to balance on an exercise ball for time. This turned out to be hilarious to watch. The next to last event was dribbling a soccer ball backwards for time. This event was difficult, mostly due to the fact that we'd been drinking for several hours at that point.

The final event was a race. The endpoint of the race was announced and runners could take any path they chose to get to it. Some runners chose a longer, safer route, and the rest of us ran in a straight line, which just so happened to include a dirty canal. It was the perfect moronic ending to another great Moronathon. After the competition, everyone cleans up and gets together for a bbq and a presentation of the trophy, which is a wooden statue of a duck.

Rob has tons and tons of video and is working to splice together another movie for this year's event. Oh, and if you're wondering how well Rob did in the Moronathon this year, doesn't this picture say it all?

To the Ends of the Earth... and Back!

2009-05-26T09:16:00.003+02:00

While it's been too long since we posted here, it's not like we haven't been busy. Erika returned to Cape Town for several weeks and Rob visited her cousin, Jason, in Spain, hosted Brian for Queen's Day festivities and chased Erika down to the very bottom of Africa.* As of this posting, we're both in Amsterdam though we'll be heading back to Portland for a couple weeks in June.

Erika's project in Cape Town has kept her quite busy, but she's been able to use the weekends to see some of South Africa. During her last trip she climbed Table Mountain, toured the east coast city of Durban, went for another round of winetasting, and hiked up to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope:

Meanwhile, Rob headed to Madrid and Seville to spend a few days with Jason, who was in country on business. Spain is absolutely beautiful, but Rob's pretty sure that the views he'll remember forever all pretty much looked like this:

Queen's Day is the biggest Dutch national holiday and Rob's friend, Brian, flew out to catch the big party. After the parade, they hit the Keukenhof Tulip Gardens, the Dutch island of Texel, and, of course, the famous Cheese Market:

Now that Erika's back in town, we just had a fantastic weekend with a barbecue in the park followed by a day on the boat in the canals, made even more perfect with the addition of our friends, Rachel and Shawn, who are visiting from Portland. Rob and Shawn are having a lot more fun than they're letting on in this picture.

It's been an incredibly busy and quick six weeks and with our return trip home, it won't be slowing down anytime soon. We hope to revisit some of these adventures and give them a proper write up, but just wanted to let everyone we're doing well. Oh, and if you haven't visited (or have and want to come back), we're happy to announce that we've decided to stay one more year, so there's plenty of time to come hang out with us!

*Okay, so technically neither Cape Point nor the Cape of Good Hope are the southernmost tip of Africa, but you get the idea. This footnote should assure of two things: This blog is fact-checked and Rob is a nerd.

Scotland

2009-04-20T12:08:00.006+02:00

Over Easter weekend, we toured part of Scotland with Kirsten and Josh. Rather than fly, we took the unorthodox route of taking an overnight ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle, England and driving up to Edinburgh. The trip started off ominously as our google map preparation and our TomTom GPS both (and of course, we) failed to take into account the insane rush hour traffic, so our 25 minute trip took over an hour and a half and our 'let's get there early' plan quickly melted into a panicked 'so, if we miss this ferry, what do we want to do this weekend' discussion. Luckily we cruised into the ferry landing just in time, trading in 4 minor heart attacks for the convenience of driving straight onto the boat and avoiding the lines.

The ferry experience was mixed. The ride over to England was pretty good. The boat was huge (like a small cruiseliner) and had shops, bars, and restaurants. We slept in little bunks and it was nice to wake up, have breakfast, and get on the road. The trip back, however was not as simple. There were 40-50 young Brits heading in to Amsterdam for the rest of the long weekend and they took full advantage of the ship's bars. We have no problem with the kids having fun, but unfortunately a dozen of them had rooms across from us, so we had the luxury of listening to them until about four in the morning... Also funny was that we had smaller rooms on the way back, notable for the bathrooms which were so small that the shower was a triangle shaped wedge right next to the toilet. You could literally shower while on the toilet if you were so inclined (we weren't!).

So, anyway. Scotland. Expecting the worst, we were delighted to have three days of sunshine. The Scottish countryside is absolutely beautiful: gorgeous green hills, marked off with stone walls and full of livestock, mostly sheep.

And, since it's spring, almost every field of sheep was littered with lambs, who frolicked and played in the most ridiculously adorable way, filling our first hour on the road with a car full of 'awwwws' and 'oooohs' (and about a dozen near death experiences as Rob split his focus between driving on the left side of the road and trying to see what all the 'awwwwing' and 'oooohing' was about). If you think you'd eventually become numb to little lambs being absurdly cute, you're wrong.

We survived the Scottish Lamb Deathtrap and made it to the town of Jedburg (pronounced Jed-bourough). Jedburg's home to the remains of Jedburg Abbey, a 12th century church and monastery destroyed centuries ago during a war with England.

In fact, in an interesting twist on the Giant European Churches that we seem to spend a part of every trip in, there are several church ruins in Scotland. Our favorite was probably Sweetheart Abbey, near the coastal town of Dumfries. Sweetheart Abbey is so called because it was founded as a monument to a Scottish Lady's dead husband (and where she was later buried along with her husband's heart. Rob asked Erika if she'll get buried with his heart. She wasn't so sure). The grounds inside Sweetheart Abbey are overgrown with lush green grass, so as you walk through the old church, it really feels like a beautiful and ancient sculpture.

Eventually, we made into Edinburgh, where we had a lovely dinner in a small pub and walked around the city. We met this (possibly crazy and) exceptionally nice lady on the bus who heard us talking and proceeded to recommend her favorite 12 restaurants. Actually, every single Scot we chatted with was nice and friendly and helpful. We stayed at a small hotel just outside the city center, which was notable for its tiny beds. Rob's feet and ankles hung off the edge and Josh, who is 6' 11", had an even rougher time of it.

The following day, we made our way into the city. Edinburgh Castle towers over the city and is definitely worth a tour. We do have one good tip to share. If you go to the castle you can view the Honours of Scotland, which are the old crown jewels of the Scottish Kingdom. The jewels are beautiful, but what we didn't know was that there were two ways to view them. The door we entered led to a 45 minute line that wrapped through a cheesy museum display giving the history of the jewels. The display was actually okay, but it was prerecorded and repeated itself 3 or 4 times as you waited for the line to move. When we finally made it to the viewing room we discovered there was another entry way that led directly to the jewels. One of the older women in that line was very curious about where we came from, but when Rob assured her that she hadn't missed anything she shrugged and said, "Got it. Just google it."

After the viewing the castle, we had lunch and enjoyed a Scottish Whisky tasting. It would have been preferable to visit a distillery, but we didn't really have the time to go north into the Highlands. The tasting was great as you got an appreciation for how different the whisky from each region in Scotland is. We spent the rest of our time in Edinburgh wandering through the old city and doing a little shopping before heading out to the western coast.

We spent the next night in Dumfries, a small fishing town, where had the unnerving experience of walking around the city center while scarcely seeing another soul as we looked for a place to eat dinner. It was like something out of a bad horror movie where all the locals turn in after sundown. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) we never came across any Scottish vampires or zombies and finally found the one non-Chinese restaurant that was open after 8. The next day we headed back to England to catch our ferry, but not before visiting a working 15th century mill and Caerlaverock Castle.

The mill's water wheel still works and there's a miller who still grinds oats a few times a month.

Caerlaverock Castle is mostly in ruins, but the two tall battle towers are still quite imposing and the castle is still surrounded by a moat. The castle was destroyed and rebuilt several times and there is a lifesize replica of a medieval trebuchet (catapult) on the grounds.

The castle visit also gave us one last chance to enjoy some haggis, which is not as bad as you think it will be, and which Rob was delighted to find can be eaten on a baked potato. How can anything be bad if you can eat on a baked potato?

We had such a good time in Scotland that we think we need to go back. The people, the food, the whisky, the sights, and the country were so great, we left wanting more.

Now that their vacation is over, maybe they can rest

2009-04-15T21:58:00.006+02:00

Well, that was quick. Kirsten and Josh have returned home, but we tried to cram in as much as possible while they were here. After the trip to the model village in The Hague, we toured the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and made a trip out to the Keukenhof Gardens to see the tulips.

In addition to the beautiful flowers, we also saw an actual Dutch gardener wearing actual wooden clogs:

Of course, one of the main reasons Rob likes returning to the Keukenhof is for the Belgian Waffles, which he happily introduced to Josh:

The day before they left had probably the nicest weather of the year here in Amsterdam and we celebrated by making a second trip along the canals on the boat. And no trip to Amsterdam is complete without a trip to our favorite Dutch jenever bar for a glass of the traditional Dutch drink in the traditional fashion:

And finally, we celebrated Easter weekend with a quick trip to lovely Scotland. We'll get another, Scotland-centric post up tomorrow, but until then, here are Erika and Kirsten checking out a couple of swans in a moat around a 13th century castle:

It was fantastic seeing Kirst and Josh and we hope they had as much fun as we did. See you guys again this summer!

The Most Exciting Thing You'll See All Day

2009-04-07T18:18:00.005+02:00

Back to the South Africa posts! The winery we stayed at also had a small cheetah sanctuary. Cheetahs are an endangered species and are still frequently targeted by farmers for killing livestock. The purpose of the sanctuary is to raise awareness about the plight of the cheetah and to promote alternate methods of protecting livestock, including the use of Turkish Anatolian Shepards, which are giant, fast, and extremely protective dogs that are famously good at protecting herds of livestock from bears and wolves (the center also breeds the dogs).

The center houses about 15 cheetahs, including the cubs above. The center breeds the cheetahs and feeds and cares for them. Here are some interesting facts about cheetahs:

Cheetahs sleep 18 hours a day
There are wild cheetahs in Iran. Iran! And all this time we worried about nukes.
Cheetahs are indifferent to German goth girls:

And of course, cheetahs are famously fast. We had the amazing luck of catching one in action while we were at the center, but it was almost too quick to capture. So lean in and pay attention, or you'll miss it:

Sisters, Sisters!

2009-04-06T11:12:00.004+02:00

Erika's back from South Africa for a few weeks- just in time for a visit from Kirsten and Josh. Amsterdam has been struggling to break into spring weather, and the day everyone arrived was the nicest day of the year. Unfortunately, the next day, when we took Kirst and Josh out on the boat, the weather changed again, and we sat under the clouds all day. Still, any day on the boat is a good day.

On Sunday, we headed into The Hague and toured the Madurodam, which is, in a sense, the smallest town in the Netherlands. Curiously billed as a war memorial/amusement park/exhibition, the Madurodam is a model town filled with 1/25 scale models of many of the most famous buildings in the Netherlands.

In addition to the buildings, the model has over 60,000 'villagers' and over 4500 vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats, trains, and airplanes.

Several of the vehicles move around on magnetized tracks, and there is a working lock system where two motorized ships move back and forth through the locks.

The whole place really begs the question, "Why?," but it was still an interesting sight. All the trees in the village are real plants, and the canals are stocked with fish. We were hoping some of the 'giant' birds would attack the villagers, but they didn't cooperate.

Afterwards, we walked through a little bit of The Hague and checked out a small museum which is famous for a 360º panorama painting of the Dutch coastline. When we got home, the girls made an amazing dinner of Eggplant Timbale:

That beautiful thing is stuffed with pasta, meat, cheese and other goodness. It was delicious!

The rest of this week will be spent exploring Amsterdam and a possible trip to the Keukenhof Gardens to see the tulips in bloom.

Stellenbosch

2009-03-31T16:18:00.004+02:00

We celebrated the first weekend together in South Africa in high style: wine tasting in the Stellenbosch region. For Erika, it was a return to the scene of a previous trip, but this time she and her co-workers all had their significant others to escort them. Once again, we hired the awesome Dean to drive us around from vineyard to vineyard. Ushering a bunch of wine drinking tourists around all day could be torturous, but Dean's a tough ex-cop, so it's a walk in the park for him. Dean:

The weather and the wine were fantastic and we hit five or six different places. South African wine is quite good and we especially liked a variety called Pinotage, which comes from a grape engineered from two separate grapes (sorry for all the technical terms...) and which one of our hosts complained that the French refer to as a blend, although the South African's would beg to differ. Anyway, pinotage is a full bodied red wine which often has a chocolaty flavor. Wine and chocolate? Oh, yeah.

The vineyards and tasting rooms were all gorgeous, from the one that was underground:

to the one under a giant English oak:

There was a great anecdote about English oaks being brought to South Africa to make barrels, but the rest of that anecdote is a casualty of the wine tasting...

When the day wound down we headed to Spier, a vineyard/resort where we had dinner and spent the night. The restaurant served African food and was a little touristy (we had our faces painted. Don't judge- there was a lot of wine involved) but the food was amazing and our friends Dave and Ed joined the band:

We left the next morning with full bellies and loaded down with several bottles of wine from the many vineyards we'd visited. This beautiful region is just over an hour outside of Cape Town and should be part of any visit to the Cape.

Robben Island

2009-03-30T13:56:00.003+02:00

Robben Island is a small island north of Cape Town (the geography of Cape Town was constantly screwing with Rob's head. He had always figured that it was on the southern coast of South Africa, but it's really on the western coast and, due to the shape of the bay, it actually faces north/northwest. If it weren't for the giant mountain as a reference point, he would have been hopelessly lost. We're explaining this because if you were like Rob, you would think that an island north of Cape Town was in the middle of South Africa). The island was home to the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment and the prison (and island) is now a museum.

The tour of the island is in three parts. The first part is a 25 minute video that plays on the ferry on the way to the island, which gives some of the history of the island and an informative background of the politics and discrimination of the apartheid era. But, if you're like Rob and you ride on the top of the ferry so you can take 40 pictures of sailboats, you miss the video and only find out about it after the fact... But just look at that sailboat. So peaceful.

The second part of the tour is a 45 minute bus tour around the island. The bus tour is led by a museum guide, who was incredibly informative and funny and the tour was really good, but you never leave the bus and the windows are closed, so you can't really take pictures. They are trying to preserve the island, so it's understandable that they don't need thousands of tourists tromping all over, and while you don't really need pictures of the guards' houses or other infrastructure, there were a couple of places that it would have been nice to see up close.

The final part of the tour is the prison itself. The tour guides are either former prisoners or former guards. Rob's guide was a former prisoner named Glen, who had been imprisoned for six years for organizing protests against the apartheid government. Glen had mixed feelings about returning to the prison, which is understandable of course, but even more incredible when you learn that the tour guides all live on the island with their families (Glen says the ex-prisoners and the ex-guards don't really hang out).

The prisoners on Robben Island were forced to do manual labor. There is a limestone quarry where many of them, including Mandela, dug limestone and where the dust and bright light off the stone caused many of them to lose some of their eyesight. They also built extensions of the prison and all the buildings (and tennis courts, etc) that the guards lived in. The prison was built using slate from the island and the buildings are strangely beautiful.

Depending on the offense or sentence of the prisoner, they either lived in a community room, with 24 to a room, or alone in a tiny cell. Despite the circumstances, the political prisoners were very organized and created a network to teach each other to read, write, and other skills. Over time, the prisoners fought for and got the right to receive newspapers and a radio, so they were able to get a little access to the outside world. Though it gradually improved, for many years, the waiting list for family members to visit took almost 2 years to 'process.' Eventually, they were able to take correspondence courses and receive degrees. Mandela was moved to another prison in 1984, in part (some say) to prevent or disrupt the education and organization of the younger generation of prisoners. In fact many political prisoners were moved in the early eighties, though the prison remained in use until 1996.

After the tour, visitors have about 15 minutes to wander around until the ferry is ready and most people go check out the island's penguin colony. The locals seem to think this is somewhat ridiculous- as our bus guide said, "The penguins are over there. People seem to like them. If you've never seen one, they are white and black." However, if you ever go, the time is better spent wandering the standing exhibit in the prison, which Glen may or may not have mentioned to his group (Glen's method of giving a tour was pretty much to not stop talking, whether or not everyone had caught up to him or not).

Rob says a tour of Robben Island is a must if you visit Cape Town. He is (and he suspects, most Americans are) fairly ignorant of most of South Africa's history and Robben Island is a stunning introduction to apartheid, as seen through the eyes of a political prisoner.

The view of Table Mountain from a cell on Robben Island

I Bless The Rains Down in Afffrica!

2009-03-28T13:07:00.006+01:00

A month without posting! For shame. Not that we haven't been busy. Erika came back from Cape Town and, having spent a month in a hotel, cooked up a storm, culminating in our annual pie party. The pie party was a belated celebration of National Pie Day, delayed because of Erika's business trip and to coincide with the now annual visit of our dear friend, Jane. Everyone brings a pie, sweet or savory, baked or bought, and we all share. It's as awesome as it sounds. We ended up with something like a dozen pies and according to Rob and his PPLO stats (Percentage of Pie Left Over) Erika's savory tamale pie (with amazing polenta crust!) was the hit of the evening:

Rob also got to visit his friend, Jon, who was in the neighborhood (well, Brussels) for a couple days with work. We are well aware that we live a crazy life when we get emails saying, 'hey, I'll be in Brussels for a couple days if you want to grab a beer.'

And speaking of living that crazy life, Rob recently joined Erika for a couple weeks in Cape Town. Leaving cold, wet, and gray Amsterdam for sunny, 80 degree Cape Town? Yes, please.

Cape Town is a city of 3 million sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the majestic Table Mountain. (Next to Table Mountain is another mountain with two parts, the Lion's Head and hilariously, the Lion's Rump). Going to Cape Town is like just dipping your toe into Africa. The city has a very European feel, due to its English and Dutch colonial (and slave trading) heritage. In fact, one of Erika's South African coworkers claims that you have to drive at least 3 hours away from Cape Town to get into real Africa. However, for those of us just visiting, the realities of Africa are very apparent, driving past the townships (suburb-sized ghettos where the 'houses' consist of tin and aluminum shacks stacked next to each other) and into the city, where most people live in either gated communities or in houses with huge fences and barred windows.

Luckily, despite its troubled past, the city (and South Africa) feels full of promise and growth. South Africa is set to host the 2010 World Cup, so there are dozens of highway, hotel, and other construction projects in addition the building of a new stadium. The papers count down the days until the World Cup and the sense of pride and enthusiasm in showing of the country is palpable and even contagious. Everyone, both black and white (and, as they are classified in South Africa, colored, which are the South Africans that are neither black nor white but are descendent from the many Indonesian, Indian, or other Middle Eastern or Asian immigrants, former slaves, and servants that made their way or were brought to South Africa) is very excited to have visitors and very proud of the country- and for good reason. The land is simply gorgeous, the people are friendly and absolutely beautiful, and the food is fantastic, cheap, and washed down with delicious South African wines.

We had an incredible time and we'll be putting up more posts this week about our trips, including wine tasting, visiting the Cape of Good Hope, Rob's first cricket match, our safari and more. Rob's back in Amsterdam with the 1500+ pictures we took so there should be plenty to see both on the blog and on the flickr account soon.

There's just something about being on the West Coast

2009-02-23T14:20:00.003+01:00

The west coast of South Africa that is, although it has a very Portland-like feel. Erika has had the good fortune to get put on a project down in Cape Town, South Africa where she's been enjoying 70+ degree weather in the middle of Amsterdam's cold, wet winter.

The first weekend of her adventure was filled with a little sight seeing where she checked out the Eastern Cape and the well known Jackass Penguins. Not exactly the type of animal Erika was expecting to see in South Africa that's for sure!

The weekend was topped off with a Sunday concert in the Kirstenbosch gardens which made Erika feel right at home. The grassy concert hill was filled with families, groups of friends, lots of kids, and plenty of picnic baskets filled with good food and loads of wine. The amateurs in the park (that would be Erika and her two colleagues) did not manage to pack any sort of picnic and were subjected to packaged sandwiches and water only...no wine for sale on the premises. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it truly was a great time. Just think of the Portland Zoo concerts on a beautiful summer day and you'll have the right idea.

The second weekend of her adventure entailed a Saturday wine tour in the Stellenbosch wine region. The group hired a driver for the day (very much advised), and hit up four different wineries for tastings and another one for a luxurious lunch on the patio, with wine of course. On Sunday, a local colleague opened up his home and invited the group over to his place for a braai (South African for BBQ).

Jack & Jan may recognize the third girl in...it's Katie who was kind enough to let her Amsterdam apartment be their home away from home when they visited the Netherlands.

All in all, Cape Town has been spectacular. It's full of diversity, beauty, genuine and down to earth people that have been wonderfully warm and hospitable. Rob's coming down in March and we hope to safari with some friends and maybe hit the beach (and maybe smuggle back a penquin... our lease says no dogs, but there's nothing in there about penquins...).

Connor shakes it for the camera

2009-02-09T12:47:00.003+01:00

Just a warning for those of you with young kids: Rob teaches them stupid tricks.

We kept waiting for the thing to pop...

Kirchberg

2009-02-09T12:15:00.004+01:00

Our ski trip this year started out with an ominous sign: on the first day, Rob took his skis in to get them fitted to his new boots. The Austrian ski shop guy took one look at the bottom of Rob's skis, scarred from a previous run-in with some 'misplaced' rocks (who puts rocks on a mountain?) and announced, "These skis are only for the trash!" Luckily, one quick rental later and we were on our way.

The skiing was fantastic and the runs were long and covered several different mountains. Rob quickly realized that he was severely outclassed by Kevin, but he tried his best to keep up (Erika, of course, has no trouble keeping up, as long as the run isn't too flat).

Of course, the second best thing about skiing in Austria is stopping for lunch and enjoying the hearty food and a beer. Here we are, squinting, at a lunch break.

And, the third best thing about skiing in Austria is that they had the wonderful foresight to put bars on the mountain. So, on the days when your legs are on fire and you start questioning your physical fitness, safety, and sanity, there's a nice place to stop and forget about it all:

It was a wonderful trip and we'll put up some more photos on the Flickr page. We're also trying to cut together some of the video we took, so look for that soon!

You say 'charming,' I say 'boring'

2009-02-01T10:07:00.003+01:00

We just spent a fantastic week with our friends, Tanya, Kevin, and Connor skiing in Austria. Before we left, we showed Connor around Amsterdam. He was not impressed.

More pics and videos of our ski trip to follow! (Tanya and Kev- we hope you had a great flight. You did fly this time, right?)

It's (Amster)dam Cold Here!

2009-01-11T18:03:00.004+01:00

After being back for Portland's coldest winter in 40 years, we came home to the rarely frozen Amsterdam. Every few years it gets cold enough here for the canals to freeze over and as soon as it does, the Dutch flock to the ice to skate. Here are some pictures Erika took in the park this weekend of our little Dutch Winter Wonderland.

Goober-natorial?

2009-01-07T11:24:00.003+01:00

Image courtesy of Rob's freaking parents.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-07T10:57:00.003+01:00

The new year finds us back in Amsterdam after a very relaxing two weeks in snowy Portland. We had a little bit of an adventure getting there, with an overnight delay/diversion in Minneapolis, but we were able to visit a couple of our friends while we were there, so it was actually pretty nice. Portland suffered through it's heaviest winter in 40 years, so that was fun. The area doesn't really have the need, practice or infrastructure to deal with snow and ice, so we spent most of the first week happily confined to Erika's mom's house eating and visiting.

We spent the second week of our trip running around with wedding related errands, which was fun, exciting, and a little overwhelming (but mostly fun and exciting). We capped off our trip with a nice New Year's Eve party with some friends (Rob celebrated more than he should have and spent most of the next morning valiantly (and successfully) trying not to, um, revisit the previous night's festivities, especially since we stayed at a friend's house and while revisiting the previous night's festivities is unpleasant enough, it's a little rude to do it at someone else's house, especially when that someone else is sleeping in the next room and might be awakened by said revisiting).

It's good to be back in Amsterdam and we're slowly getting past the jet lag. We awoke this morning to a nice dusting of snow as Holland has been having a nice little winter, too. We're looking forward to the coming year and are very happy to have some awesome visitors lined up for the rest of the winter and into the spring. And, there's always room for more if anyone else is up for it...

Hope everyone else had a great holiday and we wish you all a Happy New Year!

Christmas Market in Cologne

2008-12-12T17:29:00.003+01:00

Last weekend we took the train with some friends to Cologne, Germany to visit the city's Christmas Market. We love the Christmas Markets because they bring so much of what we love together to one place: eating, drinking, shopping, eating, drinking, and eating.

The Cologne Christmas Market is split into five separate markets throughout the city, each with its own theme. There was the main market, the angel-themed market, the medieval market, a market devoted to selling food (for cooking- every market had food for eating), another market on large barge docked on the river. We took our time and didn't make to each one, but saw most of them. The medieval market is like a renaissance fair, so it's kind of A Very Hippie Christmas, but the food looked great- giant kabobs of meat and "mead." Unfortunately, it was evening by the time we got there and, this being the medieval market, they weren't too big on electricity, which made it kind of hard to see everything. Still, the markets offered many temptations (that's our friend, Paul, ordering some cookies):

While the Christmas decorations are always beautiful, we mostly bought things we can use (i.e. eat) like some delicious German mustard and a handful of things from a booth where every thing for sale had vanilla in it. But, really, shopping is only a small part of why you go to the market. Here, Erika waits in line for (another) gluhwein (with amaretto, of course):

Japanese Pancakes

2008-12-02T19:45:00.004+01:00

We don't know about you, but we'd never heard of Japanese Pancakes before, and when our friends invited us to dinner, we figured it was a weird Dutch take on Japanese food (the Dutch do love their pancakes). Instead, it's an actual real thing and even more, it was delicious. The Japanese word for this kind of pancake is Okonomiyaki, which literally means 'cook as you like.' At the restaurant in town, they serve three different styles: Osaka, Hiroshima, and Negi-yaki. Naturally, we tried all three.

The Osaka style has most of the ingredients mixed in with the batter and then various toppings are added depending on what you order.

The Hirosima style starts with a thin, crepe-like pancake of only batter, and then several layers of ingredients are piled on top, including fried noodles and a fried egg. That's the monster on the left side of the picture:

The Negi-yaki style also starts with a thin pancake, but differs from the others in that it has no cabbage, but plenty of scallions. The Negi-yaki pancake is also topped with another pancake and compressed as it cooks (also note the toppings added to the Osaka pancake in the foreground):

Most are served with a Japanese mayonnaise or a sweet sauce and they are very filling (but, allegedly, full of enough cabbage to keep the calorie content down, which of course means, sure, have another beer). The finished product:

They were amazingly good and we can't wait to go back.

Food!

2008-11-27T18:01:00.004+01:00

Happy Thanksgiving! We had our big dinner a couple weeks ago (with a 28-pound turkey!) so we've already enjoyed a solid week of leftovers and get a couple extra weeks to recover before the Christmas meals. Still, in the spirit of the holiday and the fall season, here are some recipes we've enjoyed recently:

We went on a barley kick for a couple weeks and made this barley soup and this wonderful (Rob really liked it) risotto-style barley.

To prepare for our Thanksgiving dinner for 30, Erika whipped up a practice batch of this stuffing, and then did it again a week later. That's a lot of stuffing. No Cuisinart over here, but it would have been nice. Twenty minutes seemed a little long for the lemons - we'll peel them a little next time and cook them for only 15.

If you can believe it...we're cooking brussel sprouts now (even Rob- of course, everything's better with bacon).

And just another plug - the butternut squash lasagne is perfect for the fall. Good eating!

Snowstorm in Amsterdam!

2008-11-22T10:05:00.004+01:00

We knew something was in the air yesterday when it hailed twice (for a total of 90 seconds):

But we weren't prepared for the total blizzard that hit the city this morning. Just look at our car! It's going to take us ~~days~~ ~~hours~~ ~~minutes~~ seconds to dig out of that:

Apologies to Rob's parents, who have already had one real blizzard this year and to those of you who can look forward to many more!

Remember

2008-11-11T11:13:00.003+01:00

It's Veteran's Day, and since there aren't any sweet old vets selling poppies here, we thought we'd post one here for our dads, granddads, and all of our friends who still serve. Speaking of which, our friend Duffy is home again. You should check out the link at the right to see some very happy little girls. Welcome home, Duff!

Last Boat Trip of the Year

2008-11-09T13:38:00.005+01:00

Incredibly, we had a beautiful sunny day yesterday and so we jumped at the chance to take one last boat trip before the winter sets in. We bundled up with blankets, (spiked) hot chocolate, (spiked) coffee, and some (unspiked) hot apple cider and tried to capture the quickly fading fall colors. We took turns with the camera, but Erika got most of these:

There's a whole in the world like a great black pit

2008-11-02T11:09:00.003+01:00

We hope everybody had a great time this Halloween. We got together with a some other Americans and crowded into a dutch bar and forced our holiday shenanigans on the bewildered locals. Can you guess who we are?

If you guessed Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, you are correct. If not, don't feel too bad. We had to explain it to a lot of folks- basing your costume on a year-old musical movie is fairly obscure. Still, it was a lot of fun. Did you notice the meat pie Erika's holding? Nice, huh?

Jelelelelele! Ajax, Amsterdam!

2008-10-27T18:18:00.004+01:00

That is the most prominent chant for the local soccer team (of course we thought it had, you know, words in it, but these are soccer fans we're talking about). Rob went in for season tickets with some friends and we took advantage of a rainy Sunday afternoon to catch the most recent match. The home team won handily, 2-0, and the team is having a pretty good year so far- the team always seems to do 'pretty good.' They're not the Yankees or the Red Sox, but more like the Cardinals- an old team with a great history and every once in a while they'll take the championship from the better clubs in the country. Just look at all the banners:

Rob's still learning the ins and outs of Ajax fandom, but most of the fun is just going to the game. We 'enjoyed' some lovely stadium food, including a noble, but failed Dutch attempt at a hamburger, and were thrilled to find the belgian waffle stand as we filed out toward the train station after the game.

The nice thing about a soccer match is that it's 90 minutes of play with about a 10 minute halftime, so we can get there and back in just over two hours (as opposed to a baseball or football game which approach four hours). Of course, soccer being soccer, that doesn't always mean it's an exciting two hours. Erika said she had a good time, but judge this picture for yourself:

Wedding Planning, by Donald Rumsfeld

2008-10-19T21:36:00.004+02:00

As we start to make plans we've discovered that "we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Thankfully, one thing we know we know is what our song will be. Vicki, start learning the words...

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Ah, Paris!

2008-10-16T19:20:00.006+02:00

A few weeks before we moved to Amsterdam, we had dinner in Portland with two other soon-to-be-expat couples, Sara & Aaron and Chris & Casie. Like us, Sara & Aaron moved to Amsterdam, while Chris & Casie have been enjoying life in London. Anyway, at that dinner in Portland we had many bottles of wine and decided that we should all meet again for dinner a year later in Paris to celebrate a year abroad... and so we did.

The weekend weather was incredible and we took advantage of it by mostly staying outdoors. We headed back to Montmartre to find some art and we were happily surprised to find a food and wine festival taking place. It was a gorgeous day spent sipping wine and tasting various honey, sausage and cheese. After a while, we decided to take in a little art and headed to the Musée Rodin, where we walked through the sculpture garden and Erika took the briefest of naps before we were shooed out at closing time. Here's Rodin's The Thinker and a stalkerific shot of Erika (taking ~~stalker~~ candid photos of Erika is one of Rob's new hobbies with the new camera. He would have put up more to prove it, but Erika's eating a sandwich in most of them -the same sandwich-Erika doesn't go all around Paris eating sandwiches- and pictures of someone eating aren't always very flattering, or so he's been told).

On Saturday night we had an amazing dinner in a small French restaurant just off of Pont Neuf and then went out for a few more drinks.

On Sunday we remained outdoors on a nice bike tour of the city, including lunch in the Jardin des Tuileries (the garden in front of the Louvre).

It was an absolutely lovely weekend (even carpooling with a 10 month old wasn't too bad) and a very cool way to celebrate our first year in Amsterdam.

On the Boat with Jason

2008-10-13T17:56:00.003+02:00

Erika's cousin, Jason, was in town last weekend for a quick visit before heading off to Denmark on a business trip. Rob and Jason toured the inside of several local cafés and the two cousins later took in an exhibit at the Van Gogh museum. After one failed attempt at a canal tour- it started raining buckets as we left the house- we were able to bundle up for a brisk evening boat ride. We even managed to bring a thermos of hot chocolate.

For some reason, the canal that runs through the red-light district was overrun with swans, so we played 'chicken' (or is it 'swan') as we made our way through town.

Crete

2008-10-07T18:19:00.004+02:00

Our trip to Crete was wonderful, even before we got engaged. While it was great to be home in August, it proved to be one of those "vacations" where you get home more tired than you left, and so the point of the trip to Crete was to sit on the beach, read a few books, and to generally just relax. Of course, an hour after we arrived on the island it started to rain (for the first time in six months), so we were a bit nervous that we'd waited too long to get in one more week of summer. However, the bad weather blew over as we napped the next day and we were able to get plenty of time on the beach.

In the interest of keeping it a stress-free, relaxing trip, we spent most days by the beach and only took one day trip, to the island of Spinalónga, in East Crete. Spinalónga is a small, impenetrable island that served as a Venetian fort in the 16th century, but is more recently famous for having been home to the last leper colony in Europe. Fun!

Our trip included a tour of the island, swimming on a remote beach, and a greek barbecue and while the swimming, the barbecue, and the views were great, we wouldn't recommend the trip. There are other, better sights to see in Crete, but we weren't really interested in getting up at 5 to catch a 3 hour bus ride- at least not for this trip. Still, Crete is home to the caves where Zeus was born and who could forget the Minotaur?! Maybe next time.

The sun and the ocean were amazing, but we were just as happy with the food. Greek food is so good! And, since they have a lot of German tourists in this town, everybody served German beer. (In fact the town seemed to cater strictly to Dutch, Germans, and Brits. Every one we met was surprised to find out that we were American.) So, we ate a ton of food, which is sort of the opposite of what you want to do when you're spending all day in a bathing suit. We ate at many different places in town, but we found that the consistently best food was at the restaurant run by the people who also ran our apartment. Here's a shot of a typical starter, stuffed vine leaves and some baked feta. Sooo good!

And then, of course, we got engaged, which is all well and good, but was really just Rob's insecure way of keeping Erika from running away with our waiter and host, George, who constantly plied her with booze and Greek food in an effort to drive a wedge between us.

All in all a fantastic vacation and a wonderful trip. If you ever go to Crete, here are a couple things you should know: 1. The water is heated by the sun, while sitting in tanks on the roof. So, hot showers in the afternoon or evening, but not the first morning you wake up. 2. The beaches are topless (or, at least, top-optional) but the people who choose to go topless are never the people you'd choose to go topless. And finally, while you can't smoke on the plane, you can smoke in the airport (everywhere), which was probably the most foreign thing about the whole trip. It was like going back in time or being on Mad Men....

She Said Yes!

2008-10-02T17:51:00.007+02:00

We spent last week in beautiful Crete, trying to squeeze in one more week of summer, and while we were there, Rob surprised Erika with a proposal. And she said yes. We'll put up more pics of our trip soon, but here's a shot we managed to grab with our first ever use of our camera's timer. Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes!

Un Petit Chateau

2008-09-16T17:44:00.004+02:00

This weekend we joined some friends for a quick getaway to Cambrai, France. We stayed on the grounds of an old chateau and spent most of our time either eating or looking for a place to eat- which makes for a pretty good weekend. The chateau was nice (and cheap when you stay in a room not actually in the chateau), but the weather and the fact that not much in the town was open on Saturday made for a slightly different weekend in France- since all the churches and bell towers in town were closed, we opted for a trip to the local grocery store and an afternoon of, um, wine-tasting (you know, the kind of wine tasting where you buy a few bottles and then taste 'em. Repeatedly).

Sunday's weather was sunny and beautiful and we made a stop in the town of Lille on our way home. Lille has a couple of lovely squares in the city:

Rob especially liked this statue, which, if she were holding a wooden spoon, would be a dead-ringer for his mom giving the old, "You'd better get over in here by the time I count to 3. One. Two...." There's nothing like finding a little piece of home when you're living abroad...

All in all it was a lovely weekend and also gave us an opportunity to debut as The Latest Annoying Couple to Play With a Fancy New Camera. Below, Erika holds court, followed by a cool shot of the sunlight shining through the trees.

Parrots... ...Parrots.

2008-09-11T16:46:00.005+02:00

Last night we took a walk through the park and thought we'd practice with our new camera. We're still figuring out the camera, but we did manage to get a few photos of the often-rumored but rarely-seen parrots that live in the park.

Of course, parrots aren't the only wildlife in the park. There are ducks, pigeons, herons, and hippies. Oh, and of course, rabbits. If only the hippies hid in the bushes, too.

Badlands National Park

2008-09-05T14:18:00.003+02:00

Rob's parents and grandparents live on opposite sides of the state and so the easiest way to get to see everybody- and show Erika the state- was to drive. And unlike driving through, say, Kansas, or Iowa, the drive through South Dakota isn't too bad. We started out in the Black Hills, moved east into the rolling plains, crossed the bluffs over the Missouri River, and then eased into the flat farmland. It was a little tough going over and back without much of a break, but the promise of free ice water at Wall Drug can really keep you going. But, before we stopped in for our free drink, we pulled off the interstate and looped through Badlands National Park.

Like a scene from another planet and completely out of place in the prairie, the Badlands is an absolutely gorgeous park. Formed of sediment left behind when the inland sea that used to cover the Great Plains receded, the Badlands continue to erode with each rain (which also brings out bright coloring). The area is fossil-rich and finds have shown the area was once populated by precursors to the horse, rhino, and alligator. These days, it's home to bison, bobcats, coyotes, bighorn sheep, rattlesnakes, and of course, prairie dogs. We took some shots at the prairie dogs (with the camera!) but didn't get much more than little blobs of fur. So, instead, here are a few more pictures of the Badlands:

The World Famous Corn Palace

2008-09-05T13:25:00.003+02:00

Okay, maybe it's not world famous. Did you know there's a place in South Dakota that has a palace made of corn? Okay, not made of corn, but beautifully decorated in it in honor of corn's important standing in the state's economy. Originally built in 1892 as part of an exposition displaying the viability of the state's farm land in order to entice farmers and settlement, the Corn Palace has been torn down and replaced twice. Today, it's used for the annual Corn Palace Festival, the Corn Palace Rodeo, and- hold on to your hats- the Corn Palace Polka Festival. Oh, and there's a basketball court inside where the local high school team (The Kernels!) plays.

The exterior and interior are decorated in murals made of corn cobs sliced in half lengthwise and affixed to the wall. The designs are first drawn on tar paper, which is like a paint-by-corn diagram. We actually caught the palace in the process of pulling down the 2008 murals (theme: Everyday Heroes) and putting up the tar paper for 2009 (theme: America's Destinations). Here's the plan for a diagram featuring monuments in Washington D.C.:

There are around 6 different strands of corn used, which allows for the variety of color. Here's one of last year's murals of an everyday hero, followed by a close-up:

Inside the palace is a large exhibit hall where they hold the various games, festivals, and cream corn wrestling matches... okay, so they don't really have cream corn wrestling matches... but they should! The inner wall is ringed with photos of the Corn Palace from almost every year of its existence and then there are more murals above the stage and court, including this one of Mt Rushmore:

As we said, we just missed the big festival, but it's still an interesting stop if you're ever on I-90 and you need a break before you get to Wall Drug.

It's cheesy. It's kitschy. It's, well, you know.

Crazy Horse

2008-09-02T21:00:00.004+02:00

While the faces of Mount Rushmore are carved into the side of a mountain, the Crazy Horse Memorial is actually being carved out of the mountain. Crazy Horse was an Oglala Lakota warrior who fought the US Cavalry in the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. The monument was commissioned by Lakota chiefs in response to Mount Rushmore- to let "the white man ... know that the red man has great heroes, too."

The sculptor they hired started work in 1948. Work has been slow, as the sculptor worked alone for many years (that's right, one man worked mostly alone carving a mountain- to increase his workforce, he had 10 kids) and the site is nonprofit, refusing state or federal money, and surviving on donations and entrance fees. After 50 years, they had the face and top of the arm finished. Though there is a long way to go, the scale is quite impressive. In comparison, the sculpture of Mt Rushmore would fit on the side of Crazy Horse's head. When (or if) all is said in done, it will look something like this model:

If you look closely at the first picture (click to enlarge it), you'll see the outline of the horse's head painted on the side of the mountain. When asked once about his tribe's claims on territory, Crazy Horse is said to have replied, "My land is where my people are buried," and this is why he is pointing. If they ever finish, it'll be the largest sculpture in the world- several million tons of rock have already been removed.

Patriotism Swells In the Hearts of an American Pair

2008-09-02T19:39:00.006+02:00

As wonderful as Portland was/is, the trip home also provided Rob the chance to show Erika his home state, the majestic South Dakota (easily the better of the two Dakotas). Surprisingly, Erika had never been to South Dakota before, so Rob really wanted to impress her with all the state had to offer. Wasting no time, we headed from the massive (not really) Rapid City Regional Airport to the greatest symbol of South Dakota, found on the state quarter and every license plate: Mount Rushmore.

Now, Mount Rushmore is a curious thing. Carving the likenesses of our leaders into a mountain seems like an ancient civilization kind of thing to do and you can't help but wonder about future civilizations debating the meanings of each face- "Well, there are four gods, one for each of the seasons?" But, when you visit Mount Rushmore, you are struck by its beauty and scale and you do get that sort of grade-school sense of civic and national pride, which for us was augmented by the dozens of 2nd through 4th graders running around, identifying each president or finding their state flag along the viewing area. We even listened to a park ranger give a talk about the carving of the monument and while he was mostly speaking to the rows of little kids sitting cross-legged on the floor, it was pretty cool for the big kids, too.

He's standing in front of the old working model of the monument, which is beautiful in its own right. You'll notice that the presidents were modeled from the waist up, which was the original intent. But, if you look at the first picture, notice the dark rock at what would be the belly of Washington (near the tree line). That black rock is not suited for carving and so they decided to just stick with the heads.

Mount Rushmore was beautiful, but just the start of Erika's journey into the heartland of America. More to come, including giant Native Americans, palaces made of corn, and of course, prairie dogs. Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference in this post's title.

50 Pounds Heavier

2008-09-01T15:06:00.005+02:00

After two and a half weeks of home cooking and visiting favorite restaurants and bars, we're ready for our post vacation diet. Of course, most of that 50 pounds came in the form of the clothes, shoes, and other stuff we bought in an attempt to get a little relief from the exchange rate. In addition to the shopping, we had a fantastic trip, managing to see our families, our friends, and, Rob thinks, everyone in Portland that Erika has ever met.

Of special note, we were lucky enough to see all of the Other People's Kids (see links at right). Denali and Kerala were in town for the first week of our vacation (Rob was too busy playing with Denali to take any pictures), and Connor and his parents stopped by for brunch one day. As Connor is a somewhat less demanding playmate, Rob was able to snap a couple shots. Here he is with his mom, followed by a glamour shot of the pose he uses on all the ladies:

It was great to see all the Other People's Kids and, of course, all the Other People, too. We had a nice flight home and we're thrilled to spend a day with our friend, James, who was visiting from Australia. We toughed out the jet lag and had dinner with friends- okay, Erika toughed out the jet lag and had dinner with friends. Rob couldn't keep from falling asleep on the couch and so excused himself from dinner and went home and crashed. Not all was lost, however, as Erika did bring him a slice of cheesecake, which of course only adds to the weight gained from the trip home. Maybe the post-vacation diets start tomorrow...

Sooo Big!

2008-08-13T19:31:00.003+02:00

We knew our first year in Amsterdam was flying by, but we recently had a wonderful reminder of just how long we've been here:

That's Andrew, who moved here a month after we did (and was born two months after that). Seeing how big Andrew is reminded us how long we've been living it up here in Amsterdam and that we haven't been home in a while. So, we're headed back home to see family and friends for the first time in a year.

The first year's been amazing and we were so happy to have so many visitors. If you didn't make it this year, you're still invited to come (it's not like the dollar's going to get stronger anytime soon, so why wait?). But until then, if you'll be in Portland or the great state of South Dakota (for you Portlanders, it's about halfway between Portland and New York) let us know and we hope to see you when we're home!

Baarle-Hertog

2008-08-10T15:58:00.005+02:00

Earlier this month, Rob noticed several blogs mentioning the town of Baarle-Hertog, near the Belgian-Dutch border. The town is noticeable because it's both Dutch and Belgian, but in a very odd way. Instead of one border running through the town, like along a main road or a river, the town consists of 24 plots of land, with some Belgian enclaves inside larger Dutch plots and some Dutch enclaves inside larger Belgian plots.

So, as you walk through the town, you are constantly crossing between the two countries. Anyway, Rob looked it up and since it's only 15 minutes from Bier Paradijs, he dragged everyone there to check it out. He's such a nerd.

If you didn't know about the town's unique property, you probably wouldn't notice just by driving through. On foot though, you discover several signs, some more obvious than others. We parked the car and wandered into the town center expecting a clear sign of the two countries' territories- something like little Belgian kids throwing rocks at their Dutch neighbors or something: "Dutchie, Go Home!" Of course, there's nothing so dramatic as that, and we wandered for a couple blocks, a little disappointed, until Paul pointed out that we had just crossed the border:

(As we were taking pictures, the townspeople in the nearby restaurants were getting a kick out of us. Don't think they get too many tourists in Baarle-Hertog.) The line of crosses becomes a line of raised silver studs as it enters the road, and as you walk through town you spot it frequently. The line above splits two buildings, but there are several buildings and houses in town that are split by the border. As the town changes between the Netherlands and Belgium, so do the street signs and the building numbers. So, if the border intersects a street, the numbering system totally changes. It's gotta be tough on a postal worker. Somewhat helping simplify things, the house numbers feature the flag of whichever country they are in:

Anyway, it was a neat little detour and we were able to enjoy some Belgian food. At least we think it was Belgian- we were definitely on the Belgian side, but we're pretty sure the waitstaff was Dutch...

Day Tripping

2008-08-10T15:18:00.003+02:00

It's been raining all week, but the skies cleared on Saturday and so we took advantage with a little day trip with our friends, Paul and Simon.

Our first destination was the National Park De Hoge Veluwe, near Arnhem. The park was formerly the royal hunting grounds, but the only deer we saw were in pens. There is a wonderful free bike program, so we were able to tour through the forest on bikes. The park also hosts the Kröller-Müller Museum, a beautiful fine art museum with a large collection of Van Gogh and other European masters. Outside the museum is an immense sculpture park with over 100 sculptures, including this floating piece:

This piece, made of cable and aluminum, seems to defy physics- it looks like it should blow over or fall to pieces:

The view from underneath is pretty cool:

We could have spent the entire day in the park, but we wanted to stock up on 'supplies,' so we headed to our favorite border rest-stop: the Bier Paradijs. Just over the Belgian border, the Bier Paradijs is an awesome warehouse full of Belgian beer at (relatively) cheap prices (it's still in Euro, after all). You can buy full racks of beer or fill racks with individual bottles. This picture's a little blurry- we got there right before it closed and they were turning off the lights.

We stock up whenever we're in the neighborhood, and with the help of Paul and Simon, managed to fill up the car:

Not a bad haul, huh?

Luxembourg

2008-08-03T13:32:00.003+02:00

The last stop on our trip was Luxembourg. The city is built on a hill, surrounded on all sides by rivers or deep valleys, which made it a virtually impenetrable fortress for centuries. Most of the fortress walls were eventually destroyed, though not in siege, but as a demilitarization act after Luxembourg became a neutral state. Now, only some of the city walls remain and two of the 'casemates.' The city was fortified with three rings of walls, forts, and other works and the casemates were the underground tunnels used for storage, shelter, and other defense-related activities. Most of the casemates have been sealed or destroyed (over 90% of the city's defenses are gone), but they weren't able to destroy the Bock casemates without seriously damaging the city, so it's been preserved.

It was cool to wander around the tunnels, though there were more than a couple 40 ft stairways to nowhere- you mean we have to turn around, again? The casemates also offer a terrific view of the gardens below:

Finally, we wandered through the pleasant town center, found some lunch and enjoyed the view of the spectacular Pont Adolphe:

Ultimately though, Luxembourg got something of a short shrift from us. We were tired and ready to be home (and to be sure, our hotel and its neighborhood didn't help. Here's a tip- avoid the hotels across from the train station. It's a very seedy area. Lucky for Rob, he had the protection of two fierce women, so he was never too scared). So, we piled back into the car for the last time and headed home.

Somehow it's taken longer than the trip to write about it, but we're finally putting the pictures up on our Flickr page. Enjoy!

Epernay and the Champagne Valley

2008-08-01T19:38:00.004+02:00

After three days in "Champagne" we'd yet to see a vineyard, so we headed to Epernay, the "Capital of Champagne." Seated at a major crossroads in the Marne River Valley, Epernay is at the very heart of the champagne region, surrounded by hills full of grapevines. The city itself dates to the 5th century, but has a rough history of being pillaged and burned (at least 25 times!), so there is little in the way of Giant European Churches, etc. It is, however, home to some of the larger champagne houses, arranged in grand splendor on the Avenue de Champagne.

This is a (small) part of the Moët & Chandon House. Over 100 km of tunnels are dug into the chalk under this and the other houses on the avenue. That's a lot of champagne! Epernay was charming, but we had more important things to do (that would be lunch) so we packed back into the car and drove through the valley to the little town of Châtillon-sur-Marne. There, we had a most wonderful picnic of French bread, cheese, and, naturally, a little champagne:

The view across the valley was incredible and after lunch and a bit of lounging, we met the local tourism office director, who was quite possibly the most enthusiastic, friendly, and eager-to-please Frenchman ever. He stuffed map after map and guide after guide into our hands and even let us use his personal bathroom, which just solidified his outstanding reputation in our eyes. We rewarded his unparalleled service with the purchase of 3 postcards and headed down the road to Hautvillers.

Hautvillers is one of several stunningly charming towns sprinkled along the valley. In addition to the vast vineyards, each town in the region also competes for a special 'flower rating' based on each town's display of flowers. Hautvillers is also home to the abbey where the Benedictine monk, Dom Pérignon, worked and dabbled in the improvement of the champagne process. He's buried there:

We continued along the valley, enjoying the amazing view of the vineyards and the river Marne below. Our trip to the champagne region was great, but we left feeling that an even better way to enjoy it would be to stay in a small hotel in one of the valley's towns, wandering each day to the next little town over and touring several vineyards and champagne houses of varying sizes. Thanks to the Number One French Tourism Worker, we have armloads of maps and books if we decide to go back. However, our time in Champagne was up, and we drove on to luxurious Luxembourg...

Troyes

2008-08-01T14:29:00.003+02:00

On a tip from an online article, we headed south for an evening in Troyes. Thinking it would be a lovely day for a drive, we forsook the tolled highway for the more scenic backroads. We wanted to enjoy the French countryside- maybe see some vineyards?- and, after all, isn't that the purpose of a road trip? As it turned out, it rained the entire duration of the drive and the road from Reims to Troyes does not travel through any vineyards. Plus, Rob very belatedly realized that he didn't really know exactly what was so great about Troyes (he just does whatever the internet tells him to), so we didn't really know what to do once we got there. The whole thing had the makings of a disaster.

But, as we pulled into town, the skies cleared and the rain stopped. We parked and walked into what turned out to be a beautiful old-town center. The city center of Troyes is shaped like a champagne cork and still has a very medieval feel. Many of the homes and cafés are in these wonderful, crooked wooden houses and the streets are narrow and winding.

The town has its share of Giant European Churches, too, although it was too late in the day to go inside (a nice relief after Riems and Ghent), we did appreciate the tiled roof of one and the gargoyles of another:

After wandering around, we had a nice, people-watching dinner in a narrow street, while a French woman sang old Sinatra and Dean Martin songs. It was a lovely end to a long day and we headed back to Reims to get some sleep in preparation for the following day in Epernay...

Reims

2008-07-26T12:37:00.005+02:00

Reims is the unofficial capital of the Champagne region and we based our ~~drinking~~ sightseeing from there. The city itself has a very important place in French history- the city's Notre-Dame cathedral hosted the coronation of French kings into the 15th century and where Joan of Arc assisted in uniting France under one king. Here's Joan in front of Notre-Dame. She's kind of a big deal:

And while the church was beautiful and had some gorgeous stained glass windows, you don't go to Reims for the Giant European Church. You go for the champagne. First stop, the Taittinger Champagne House. The ground under the entire region is chalk, which is very easy to dig. At one point, the monks in the city had dug elaborate tunnels under the city, allowing them to move around undisturbed (sounds like crazy cool ninja monks to Rob). Now, every champagne house uses these caves to store their champagne as it ages. The tour is fascinating. The Taittinger House sits over 4 km of caves and those 4 km are stuffed with champagne bottles. The house itself only represents 10% of the storage space- the rest is stored and aged in other caves nearby.

After the grapes are harvested and fermented, they are aged anywhere between 15 months and 8 years, depending on whether or not they are vintage and the maker's own preference. At first, the wine is stored horizontally, separating the wine from the yeast sediment.

Once the sediment has settled, the bottles are moved into pupitres, which are the wooden boards shown here:

As the wine ages, the bottles are slowly turned and the angle of the pupitres are increased, ever-so-slowly sliding the sediment down to the top of the bottle. Oh, and the house has two guys whose sole job is to turn the bottles and they turn something like 6000 bottles an hour (the larger storage facility uses a machine). Once that process is completed, the end of the bottle is frozen, creating a small ice block, and the pressure then allows the expulsion of the sediment when the bottle is opened briefly. Then a small amount of wine and sugar (how much determines whether the champagne is a brut, sec, or demi-sec) is added and the wine is aged some more.

This mural shows three of the steps. The guy on the left is turning the bottles, the guy in the middle is disgorging the sediment (they still use candlelight to inspect the sediment), and the guy on the right is adding the wine and sugar.

Once the secret magic number is reached, the bottle is labeled and sold in one of these sizes (a normal bottle of champagne is the second one from the right):

After the tour, we had a tasting and, naturally, bought some champagne. There are several houses to visit in Reims, but we wanted to get out into the valley and check out some of the other towns, so we (sobered up and) headed south to Troyes...

Ghent

2008-07-25T17:45:00.005+02:00

The first stop on our little road trip was Ghent, Belgium. We'd been meaning to check it out on one of our Bruges trips, but after 2 days of gorging on beer, chocolate, fries, and mussels, we were always ready to go home and detox. Plus, we under the assumption that it was smaller than Bruges- a cute town worth stopping by on your way home. Um, we were wrong. Ghent is almost twice as big as Bruges. In fact, in the middle ages, up until the 13th century, Ghent was the second biggest city in Europe.

The historic center of Ghent is astonishingly beautiful. Unfortunately, the city was setting up for its annual culture festival, so almost every river, bridge, and street view was marred with tents, wires, signs, fences, and stages. Still, we were able to enjoy some spectacular scenery. Kathy's room at the hotel had a view of Gravensteen, the Castle of the Counts, and our dinner table had a terrific view of six or seven steeples and towers from the churches in town. The castle:

The main attraction in Ghent is probably St. Bavo's Cathedral. The church originated in the 10th century and houses one of the biggest masterpieces of the 15th century: The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The center pulpit is also incredibly ornate. When traveling through Europe, it's easy too tune out the Giant European Churches as they all start to sort of run together, but St. Bavo's is one that definitely stands out as being worth the visit.

We also visited the bell tower and the castle, making stops for chocolate and lunch at a little place called 't Stropke (Hangman's Noose) next to Decapitation Bridge. Yeah.

We probably could have stayed in Ghent another day or two, but we wanted to trade our beer for champagne so we packed up and headed down the road to Reims...

Road Trip

2008-07-24T12:58:00.004+02:00

Before bidding farewell to Erika's mom, we took a little road trip through the Champagne region of France, stopping first in Ghent, Belgium and returning through Luxembourg. It was a terrific trip, and although it rained a lot, we lucked out with the timing as it mostly rained while we were driving and would stop as we reached each destination... mostly. We'll throw up a post about each leg of our trip and put some more pictures on the Flickr page.

It was wonderful having Erika's mom here and we're looking forward to seeing her and everyone else when we come home in... oh, wait, not sure if that's fit for public viewing yet. Anyway, here are Erika and Kathy enjoying a picnic overlooking the champagne valley:

Ahhhh. Mom is here.

2008-07-14T10:31:00.005+02:00

Erika's mom is in town! After two weeks of wandering through England, Kathy is spending a couple weeks with us. We took her out on the boat for a tour of the city and then hit up the disappointing modern art museum (it's under construction, so all the good stuff is in the process of being moved).

Yesterday, we visited the Kasteel de Haar, a castle near the city of Utrecht that has been extensively repaired and restored in the last few years.

It was rebuilt among the ruins of an original 15th century castle. The man responsible for the design and renovation (including everything from the building to the silverware) was Pierre Cuypers, a famous Dutch architect who also designed Amsterdam's beautiful Central Station and Rijksmuseum. Yesterday was also the opening day of a major summer garden fair in the parks surrounding the castle, so there were booths selling everything from plants and flowers to cheese and homemade mustard (oh, and boats, saunas, and patio furniture- it was a big fair).

We were tempted by the Dutch poffertjes, but couldn't resist the Belgian waffles. We packed a lunch (PBJ!) and enjoyed a Dutch-only tour of the castle. We don't know what he said, but it sure sounded interesting.

And, at the end of the day, we came home and the girls made a delicious lasagna. Between the two of them, Rob is going to eat so well...

Thor's Bored

2008-07-07T10:42:00.003+02:00

Life can be hard on a Norse god. What do you do when there are no giants to fight? "I guess I could ride around on my magic horse and shoot lightning bolts at the peasants, but I just did that yesterday. Hmmm. I guess I could clean my room... Man, this sucks."

Statue of Thor from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.

Return to Scandinavia!

2008-07-01T14:34:00.004+02:00

Hot off the heels of our Oslo trip, we spent the weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark with some family. Erika's grandfather is enjoying a Scandinavian cruise, so we met him, Erika's cousin, Liz, and her boyfriend, Pete, for a weekend of fun in the ~~sun~~ rain. Actually, there wasn't a lot of rain. In fact, it mostly only rained when we were on the roofless boat cruise...

Copenhagen is, of course, most famous for its hotdogs. Well, not really, but to hear Rob tell it you'd think that all there was to do in the city was wander from hotdog stand to hotdog stand, gorging yourself on the delicious mystery meat- and, to be fair, he's partly right. In addition to the great food, Copenhagen is the seat of the oldest monarchy in Europe, which wouldn't be that interesting either, except that we actually saw the Crown Princess, Mary. She was ~~eating a hotdog~~ leaving a ceremony honoring the Royal Danish Guards as we were leaving our restaurant and we joined a small crowd watching her enter and then leave via her motorcade. There is some dispute over whether she was waving to Peter or to Rob. Also, her husband, Crown Prince Frederik was probably there, too, but who cares about that?

Royal intrigue aside, we had a wonderful time hanging out with Erika's family. We walked through Tivoli, the city's old fashioned amusement park. We had dinner inside the park and caught part of the park's jazz band's show:

The lady on the right is not having fun.

The following day, we toured the beautiful National Gallery, home of the largest collection of Rodin statues outside of Paris. There are hundreds of Danish, French, Roman and Greek works and the museum does a great job contrasting the (mostly white) marble statues with richly colored walls:

Later, we took the ill-timed but still fun boat cruise around the city harbor, followed by an amazing dinner in a cellar restaurant in what used to be a monastery. The next day we had brunch with Erika's grandfather and he departed for the coast of Norway. We spent the rest of the day at various hotdog stands and cafés, watching the insane antics of the recent Danish high school graduates, which include, but are not limited to: driving around the city in giant trucks while drinking beer, blowing whistles, singing songs, clapping, imploring you to honk if you're horny (which, apparently, most Danish drivers are), randomly and spontaneously pouring out from the truck to dance in circles around and then climb on giant statues of varying Danish importance, running through the streets with above mentioned whistles and bullhorns(!), stripping off their clothes and jumping into the canal, singing more songs, and basically just reminding everyone that they are 19 and you are not.

The trucks were everywhere in the city and the kids were having an absolute blast. They would scream/cheer at everyone they passed and almost everyone would holler back. The trucks have to do with a tradition of traveling to each student's house for a celebratory drink. Not a bad tradition, huh?

It was a very cool trip- the city was great, but more importantly we got to hang out with some family. Plus, hotdogs. Look for a few more pictures on Flickr soon!

Amsterdam Cleans Up

2008-07-01T14:23:00.002+02:00

Well, maybe not. The Red Light District is bustling, the dozens of 'coffeeshops' are still packed, and you're still very likely to find (or step in) dog droppings on the sidewalk, but, more importantly, today is the first day of the ban on smoking in restaurants. The Netherlands is one of the last countries in Europe to adopt the ban and it's been a red-letter day on everyone's calendar since we moved here. Everyone's a bit curious to see how much the ban is enforced, this is Amsterdam, but if Ireland, France, and Italy can manage, the Dutch should be able to follow suit.

A Nerdy, Wordy Post on Oslo's City Hall

2008-06-20T21:07:00.005+02:00

There are many beautiful things to admire in Oslo, but Rob's favorite thing by far was the city hall. While he knows this is a decidedly nerdy, civic-minded, boyscout-y thing to admit, he just can't help himself. And, to his credit, he was skeptical when all the city guides recommended a visit. City hall is a boring administration building where you go to fight parking tickets and register your car. Who visits that?

Um, Rob.

Oslo's city hall was planned in 1931 but delayed during the Nazi occupation during WWII (Rob also visited the Norwegian Resistance Museum, which was surprisingly more compelling and informative than the Dutch Resistance Museum- when you think WWII, do you ever think of Norway?) and wasn't completed until 1950. In some respects, the building looks like it was built in the 1950s: it's a red bricked building with two office towers and a long rectangular hall. No big deal. But it's really so much more than that. The two office towers are separated by the central hall, which gives the building a grand, castle-like face. Two long, covered halls stretch out towards the street and between them a fountain cascades from under two intertwined swans. Here's a picture from wikipedia:

Note the office towers. The only windows on the front form a long line down the front of each building. On each tower, the ledge forms a 't' with the windows and the statue above. While a cross could mean many things, a religious cross being the most obvious, don't they look more like swords? Anyway, that's Rob's interpretation, backed up by the art in the halls and on the building:

The outer halls are decorated with 16 beautiful wooden friezes, by Dagfin Werenskiold. The friezes are made of pine which has been cut and glued, glazed with linseed oil, paint, and then gilded with gold and silver. Each frieze is about 6 ft by 8ft and weighs a ton. They weren't messing around. Even cooler is the subject matter. The friezes detail Norse mythology. That's Odin above on his eight-legged horse Sleipner. More pictures of the friezes will be in our Flickr page. There are four pillars in front of the doorway, each emblazoned with primitive, golden symbols that look like recreations of Viking art:

And then there's the door:

Does your city hall have a front door with a dragonslayer on it? Didn't think so.

Once you get inside, you see the vast main hall. This room is the largest indoor public space in Oslo, but is most famous for being the room where they hand out the Nobel Peace Prize every year. It's surrounded on all four sides by giant, colorful murals depicting all manner of industry and city history.

The front of the room looks out to the fjord and the room is surrounded on two floors by long halls. The two halls upstairs each have their own four-wall murals, one depicting the life of man and one depicting the history of Norway. The final room is a formal space used for official state meetings and in which the official portraits of the monarchy hang. It also looks out over the fjord.

The office towers are no doubt filled with cubicles (Viking cubicles?) but overall the building really created a real sense of civic and national pride and a genuine embrace of their ancient history. With its powerful façade and grand hall, you could totally picture a Viking bursting through the front door, looking for the right office to register his boat.

A Nice Place to Live, But I Wouldn't Want to Visit

2008-06-17T15:53:00.004+02:00

Last week, Rob visited Erika in Oslo, Norway, where she's been working. Oslo is a hip and beautiful city. It's got a great public transportation system, wonderful restaurants and museums, and the people are genuinely friendly. So, what's with the title of the post? Unless you live and work and Norway and get paid accordingly, it's insanely expensive. A beer will run you 10 bucks, which actually made Rob pine for the normally heartbreaking Euro/Dollar exchange rate.

Once you succumb to the prices (easier to do when handling monopoly money or, even better, mindlessly using the credit card), Oslo has a lot to offer. Rob bought a city museum pass to minimize the damage and then tried to maximize its value by hitting up almost every museum in town. On Saturday, we took a ferry across the fjord to see several museums, including the famed Viking Ship Museum:

After the museums, we walked around the island and found a nice spot on the beach to enjoy the view:

On Sunday, we took the train up to the famous Holmenkoller ski jump and museum that overlooks the city. Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were there, so we didn't get to take advantage of the view. The museum gave an interesting history of skiing, but more importantly achieved an incredible level of verisimilitude with the exhibit on elk:

Think about it. Someone went to college, studied biology and then probably specialized in arctic wildlife, interned at some remote lab in the tundra, finally landed a job at a museum, and then thoughtfully and artfully placed each elk dropping in the precise place it was likely to fall in real life. Amazing. Bravo. (Can you tell who wrote this post?)

The ski jump is really interesting, in that it looks really imposing from below, but when you get to the top and look down, you think, "Yeah, I could do that." Okay, probably not. Especially when you consider how surprisingly worn out you are just from climbing the stairs. Still, on our way down, during a brief respite from the cramping of our legs and the rain, Erika took this cool picture:

Of course, when we got back into town, the weather cleared up, but what are you going to do? All kidding aside, Oslo was a great time and we'll put up some more posts and move some photos into the Flickr account this week.

Erika and the Art of the Side Saddle Bike Ride

2008-06-05T14:39:00.006+02:00

Although there are more bikes than people in Amsterdam, it does sometimes happen that you end up with more people than bikes. This usually happens after meeting for dinner and then choosing to go out for drinks. Some folks take the tram and some bike, so moving through the city afterward becomes a slight dilemma. If you leave your bikes, it can be a pain in the neck to come back for them. Walking your bike along the sidewalk is a horrible, awkward, and (snob alert!) touristy thing to do. Overpriced cabs are for suckers. So, depending on the level of trust you have in your friends, sometimes the best thing to do is to go two to a bike, demonstrated here by our lovely model, Erika, and our friend, Paul:

The side-saddle ride took us a long time to attempt, because it looks a little scary and a little difficult, and also Rob was afraid of the responsibility of not dumping Erika on her hind parts. In reality, it's very easy. The bike pedaler can barely tell there's an extra person on the bike, leading Rob to constantly ask, "Are you on?" (Also, there is a fear that he won't realize he lost his passenger blocks ago.) The passenger has to hop after a slight running start, but that's surprisingly easy. The trickiest part is holding your legs up for long periods of time and, of course, the hard metal bike frame isn't the most comfortable on your rear. (Unless, of course, you're as lucky and pampered as Erika, who happened to have a pillow to sit on in this photo. What a princess.)

Other than that, as long as you are sure to keep your feet and clothes out of the spokes, you'll be okay. You can't see where you're going, so that can be a little uneasy, but as long as the pedaler announces big bumps (which hurt), sudden turns, and all stops (you have to pop off before completely stopping or you'll both fall over), you should have a safe ride.

Of course, if you're not up for the thrill of the side-saddle, you could always spring for this method:

Photo of the year?

2008-06-03T14:39:00.003+02:00

From an article on msnbc.com:

Five Minutes Before Midnight in Oslo

2008-06-03T11:41:00.002+02:00

Erika's in Oslo this week for work and she took this picture of the sky late last night. The sun rises at about 4:30 a.m., so, after one rude awakening, she's sure to pull the curtains tight when she turns in.

Our Very Own Canal Cruise

2008-05-29T19:16:00.003+02:00

One of the more relaxing ways to see the city is by boat. The water's filthy, but the views are beautiful and floating below the city traffic and tourist crowds is wonderfully peaceful. While the canal tours are informative and a good way to get introduced to Amsterdam, there's nothing like having your own boat. Well, until now.

We went in with some friends on a boat rental program. It works a lot like those shared-car programs that many cities have. We pay a yearly fee and put in a request for the days and hours we want the boat. The motor's electric and therefore dummy-proof... well, allegedly dummy-proof. Erika was a pro, but Rob hasn't sat in the captain's seat yet, so we'll have to see just how dummy-proof it is the next time out. Anyway, the weather was gorgeous on Saturday and so we loaded up with snacks and drinks and met our friends for a few hours on the water. Enjoy:

Friesland

2008-05-19T19:14:00.004+02:00

After a couple of days touring Amsterdam and a dubious, rainy day-trip to Bruges, which teetered between the unfortunate beer-spilled-on-camera and longer-than-necessary train ride incidents and the always wonderful Belgian chocolate, fries, and beer consumption, we piled into the car and drove north to Friesland.

Friesland is one of the northernmost provinces of the Netherlands and has a reputation of being home to sturdy, independent, country-folk. To get there from Amsterdam, we drove across the Afsluitdijk, the 20-mile long, 100-yard wide dyke that closes off the bay from the North Sea. We first stopped in the old shipping town of Harlingen, which is a beautiful seaside town that reminded Jan of her trips to Maine. We had a little lunch and walked around a bit before heading inland to the tiny village of Aldeboarn.

Jan's ancestors on her father's side were Dutch and some of them sailed to America after leaving Aldeboarn. It was an incredibly small village, with maybe 200 homes, 1 church, and a small elementary school. The church was built in 1753 and was no doubt the same church her family attended. The church's graveyard was full of headstones with the name Dijkstra, from which Jan's family became Dykstra. We were able to enter the church (the preacher was preparing for the next day's service and the organ player was practicing, which was pretty amazing). Unfortunately, neither of them spoke English, so we weren't able to share with them or explain our trip. Still, it was very cool to get an idea of how and where Jan's people were from. Here are some pictures of the interior and exterior of the church:

Return to the Keukenhof

2008-05-19T18:38:00.003+02:00

This week we've been enjoying the company of Erika's dad, Jack, and his girlfriend, Jan. On their second day in town, we headed back to the Keukenhof to take in the tulips and take advantage of the amazing weather. What a difference a couple of weeks makes. While the tulips were in full bloom when Rob's parents were in town, they were almost completely gone from the fields when Erika's parents arrived. The garden was still almost completely full, but a small army of gardeners were pulling the heads off the tulips and trimming the stems, leaving little plots of petal-less stems mixed in with the other flowers.

Despite the pruning, the garden was still quite beautiful and we enjoyed a long walk through the flowers and statues and Erika and Jan even walked on water.

We ended the visit with a trip to the Belgian waffle cart, which was alone worth the price of admission. So if you want to catch the tulips next year, plan your visit before the middle of May and you can get your fill of tulips (or Belgian waffles) before they're all gone.

Summertime?

2008-05-12T10:24:00.006+02:00

Unbelievably, we've had a week without rain. Not only that, but it's been absolutely gorgeous out with the weather in the mid-20's. Oh, for those of you in the midwest like Rob's parents, who just got over 2 feet of snow, we should clarify. That's the mid-20's Celsius, or 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit.

To help us celebrate the beautiful spring weather (though we're a little worried this will be our two weeks of summer- reportedly it rained for almost all of May, June, and July last year) our friend, Colleen, stopped by from Portland.

We spent the weekend biking around town and sitting in the park, reading and sharing some wine and cheese. It was a very Jane weekend, Jane. Colleen even earned major cool points by riding sidesaddle on the back of Rob's bike until we borrowed one for her. Very brave, that Colleen.

Anyway, here's a little video of the girls biking through town. Enjoy!

New Photos on Flickr

2008-05-04T13:38:00.004+02:00

We've put more pics of our trips to the Keukenhof Flower Garden and the cheese market up on our Flickr page. Just click the link to the right. Not everything is labeled yet, but we hope to get to it soon. Erika took some beautiful pics of the flowers, so enjoy!

The Running of the Cheeses

2008-05-04T12:35:00.008+02:00

Every Friday the city of Alkmaar hosts a traditional cheese market. It's a largely a display for tourists, but they do sell several thousand kilos of cheese (to real purchasers. You can't buy cheese here unless you get it from one of the side vendors). In its heyday, the market moved over 300 tons of cheese a day. After the buyer determines the quality and negotiates his price, the warehousemen load the cheese up on their little runner carts and take it to get weighed. Once the cheese is weighed and paid for, the warehousemen run the cheese across the market to get loaded onto carts. The running of the cheeses is the best part:

The cheese is then transferred onto the old-timey cart:

which is then pushed around the corner from the crowd of tourists and the cheese is loaded into giant trucks.

If you like cheese, it's a perfect little half-day trip from the city. Lovely Dutch lasses hand out samples and you can pose with a warehouseman with a big wheel of cheese, like Rob's mom did:

So cheesy.

Tulip Time

2008-05-01T18:38:00.004+02:00

We woke up today to gorgeous sunny weather and decided to head off to the Keukenhof, the famous Dutch tulip garden. We thought it was the perfect day to go see the flowers. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in Holland. And France. And Belgium. If you, like us, didn't know, May 1st is a big holiday in Europe.

So, our 30 minute car ride turned into an almost 2 hour car ride, but we still made it and were still excited to see the gardens. We made our way in and found the first restroom (an unexpected 2 hour drive can do that to you). No sooner had we entered the building when it started to rain. It always rains, so we figured it would be no big deal, we could wait it out. And then it started hailing. Yeah. So we hung out with a few of our closest two hundred friends:

But, eventually, the rain would stop for a time and the sun even came out once or twice and we were able to explore the beautiful Keukenhof:

It was incredible. Of course, though it had rained most of the time we were there, when we got back to the car, the sun returned and the afternoon was as spectacular as our morning had been. So it goes... Erika took many more amazing photos that we'll try to post into our Flickr account this weekend.

Rat!

2008-05-01T18:15:00.003+02:00

Queen's Day

2008-05-01T17:17:00.005+02:00

The 30th of April is Queen's Day in the Netherlands. It's a national holiday in the vein of our 4th of July, only bigger, as the Dutch are less likely to display national pride than we are, unless it's a World Cup year. For Queen's Day the city hangs flags and everyone dresses in orange in honor of the royal family, which is descended from the House of Orange. Amsterdam hosts a music festival and opens the large city park to children, who put on little concerts and other shows. Everyone with a boat parades through the Prinsengracht, one of the main canals that rings the city. Basically, everybody gets a bunch of booze and hits the boats.

Rob's parents are in town and a couple of our friends parked their boats on the canal so we could watch the parade float by.

We had brunch in the morning at a friend's house, fought our way through the throng of people to the boats and then took it all in. We had a great time, but probably not as good as this guy:

Slow Week

2008-04-16T17:23:00.001+02:00

Update: We put up the lasagna recipe (at the Food We're Eating link on the right) and updated our Flickr account with the last of the pictures of Brian's trip. Enjoy.

It's not often that we go two weeks without posting, but it's been very, well, normal here lately. Erika's been plugging away at the office, Rob continues to get turned down by some of the finest companies in the city and we've enjoyed hanging out with friends and welcoming the ever-so-gradual change to spring weather.

We recently had some friends over for dinner and Erika made Butternut Squash Lasagna from a recipe from Rob's aunt. The squash replaces the traditional tomato layer and the whole thing is delicious. We'll post the recipe soon, but we didn't do a great job with the photos once the wine was opened... Here's the squash:

Just imagine a whole lasagna filled with that... It was amazing.

Finally, we may disable the comments soon. As some of you have seen, we've been hit a few times by malicious spyware comments that usually say something like "Please look here or here." We try to delete them, but wanted to remind everyone not to link to them. We'll see how it goes.

Smore Traveling with Brian

2008-04-16T17:21:00.004+02:00

Since it's been slow here in Amsterdam, here's one last post about Brian's visit. The last trip we took with Brian was to Maastricht.

Wedged between Belgium and Germany in the very southern part of the Netherlands, Maastricht is known for its relaxed atmosphere and the foreign influence- the city likes to joke that it's not really Dutch. This was most obviously reflected in the food, which was fantastic. In fact, dining is almost all we remember about Maastricht. Well that and our comically long and ridiculous attempt to find the "amazing, must-see" Roman fort south of the city that took us about two hours to find and five minutes to see. Because we went there, here's a picture:

In addition to the fort, the area around Maastricht is riddled with caves. The caves have a long history of hiding soldiers, as far back as the Romans and as recent as WWII, so they have some very interesting graffiti. We went into one cave, but all it said was "2-Pac 4 ever" and "Johan Hearts Marta." We don't think that's Roman... It was a little early in the year (and a Sunday) so we didn't take a tour, but we will when we go back.

The other thing Maastricht is famous for is being the original birthplace of the marshmallow. Here, a statue of the inventor, Jan Pieter Minckeleers, holds a marshmallow on a stick. He liked them well done:

Finally, we drove due east for an hour and took a short walking tour of Cologne, Germany. Cologne is home to Germany's most famous Giant European Church, the Koelner Dom:

For some reason, even though we'd walked all over Maastricht looking for that stupid Roman fort, we thought it would be a good idea to walk up into the church spires. That's about 500 feet up. Not a good idea. But, after walking 500 feet back down, we managed to find a nice German restaurant with some nice German beer and magically, all was well in the world. Funny how that works.

We'll put some more pics up in the Flickr account soon. And, if anybody's heard from Brian, let us know. Though he must have checked his email six, seven times a day while he was here, we never heard from him again...

Steak on a Stone

2008-03-31T19:30:00.004+02:00

We're back in Amsterdam after our stressful week of ~~birth control~~ babysitting. Mom, Dad, new baby and, yes, the still-living, still-breathing, and even-once-bathed two year old are all home together. You can check on their progress at the Duffy's link on the right. It was great to be able to help out and, even with the stress, we had a lot of fun. It's always great to be back in Germany and we were able to close out our trip with a visit to Rob's favorite restaurant, Gasthof (or Guesthouse) Schüttersmühle, or, as is more commonly known, Steak on a Stone.

Gasthof Schüttersmühle is on the eastern edge of an area of Germany known as the Fränkische Schweiz, or Franconian Switzerland. The Fränkische Schweiz is an area within Bavaria that is a huge tourist destination for Germans. The geography is similar to that of Switzerland (hence the name), and includes towering cliffs, hundreds of caves, a river for kayaking and rafting, several castles, and boasts the highest density of breweries in the world.

When you enter the guesthouse, you are greeted by its owner, Herr Heinz Zitzmann, who is a giant, bear of a man with huge paws, er, hands and a bushy white mustache. He's also about the friendliest German ever and when he remembers you will greet you with an enthusiastic, 'ah, the best American.' Rob hadn't been there for over two years, but Herr Zitzmann definitely recognized him and shamed him for not coming around anymore. We told him we now live in the Netherlands and when he brought out our dinners, he presented Erika's to 'the best lady from Holland.'

As far as dinner goes, in addition to a full menu of delicious German food, including an amazing Trout Cream Soup, the restaurant offers several cuts of meat served raw on hot stones that are heated in the oven. You then prepare the meat to your liking, and can also dip it in or grill it with one of 4 sauces on the side:

Washed down with a half-liter of Hefeweizen and this meal can't be beat. It was the perfect ending to our week. Just look at this happy guy:

Renting Skis, a Car, and a Two-Year-Old

2008-03-26T16:10:00.005+01:00

This has been quite a week: We went skiing in Garmisch, Germany, Erika celebrated her (redacted)th Birthday, and our friends, the Duffys, celebrated the arrival of a new little girl. Garmisch was pretty good for spring skiing, the valley was green, but the mountains were white:

We got quite a few runs in and then took Erika out to celebrate her big day, where she got to make her own birthday drink:

The next day we headed back up and during one of the trips up the gondola, we got the call about the new baby. So, we packed up the car and drove into Germany to help out (and hold the baby):

Mom and Baby are sequestered in the hospital (they're both fine, just getting some rest), and Dad is making his way back from a, um, business trip, so we've volunteered to watch the new big sis, Denali. We've always had a great time hanging out with Denali, but we really jumped in with both feet this time. This little kid is running us ragged! We've never been so tired. And there are two of us. We have no idea how Vicki does this on her own.

We hope to get some pics up, but right now, we've got our hands full with this monkey:

Happy St. Paddy's Day

2008-03-17T18:53:00.001+01:00

Two One-Horse Towns Minus the Horses

2008-03-16T11:15:00.005+01:00

There isn't much to say about Rob and Brian's trip to Alkmaar and Edam. Both towns are famous for their cheese markets and little else. So, it was a little disappointing to get up and catch the train to Alkmaar only to find that the famous cheese markets don't start until April. Rob is too nice to point out whether or not Brian's guide book explicitly stated that the cheese market doesn't open until April, right Brian?

Still, the boys made the most of it. If Haarlem is a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Amsterdam, then Alkmaar might be a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Haarlem. The boys also tried to see the obligatory Giant European Church in Alkmaar, but it, too, was closed for renovations. At least the cafés were open. Oh, and Brian got to see his first windmill:

Alkmaar also has a strong sense of community and a real dedication to green living. The light posts are manually operated and the city runs shifts each night to power the lights:

Okay, maybe that's just some sort of art piece, but never underestimate the Dutch...

If Alkmaar is a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Haarlem, then Edam might be a smaller, quieter, and more charming version of Alkmaar. Do you see a pattern here? Somewhere in Holland there is a little village that fits in the palm of your hand and radiates Old Europe charm. Edam isn't quite that small, but it's close. And, while the cheese market was closed, the boys did buy some local cheeses from a local grower and we will definitely be headed back for more. For some reason, Rob only took one picture in Edam, and though it's been posted before, here it is again: Baby Angel Death Monkey!

God Loves Brian

2008-03-11T17:51:00.003+01:00

This is an absolutely true story.

After Brian and Rob saw the auction house, they caught a bus to Haarlem. Like most Dutch towns, Haarlem is very charming, even more laid-back than Amsterdam and there are a few cool things to do there, like seeing the Frans Hals Museum and the beautiful city square (-it's also a great town for shopping, so we try to take all the girls there when they visit).

Trying to get out of the cold, they went into the Grote of St. Bavokerk, the 14th century, obligatory, giant European church in Haarlem. St. Bavokerk is interesting for two reasons: it has a beautiful lantern tower:

and it has one of the finest church organs in the world:

That thing is 98 feet tall and has over 5000 pipes. Both Handel and a young Mozart came to Haarlem to play it.

The boys wandered around the church for about 15 minutes. It wasn't any warmer inside, but they were happy to be out of the wind. The interior of the church is, um, pretty much the same as every other Giant European Church, though the ceiling is cool, as it's made out of wood, and there is a 15th century wooden bench where bread was distributed to the poor. Here's a shot of the ceiling:

Anyway, as they were standing under the giant organ deciding where to go next, Brian sneezed. And, before Rob could say 'Bless you' or 'Gesundheit' or 'Gross,' the organ sounded off with a thunderous 5 notes and then went silent. It was awesome. It had been silent for the entire time they had been in there and it remained silent for the next 5 minutes as they made their way out, but for that one split second after Brian sneezed, God blessed him.

The Flower Market

2008-03-09T13:02:00.008+01:00

When Brian arrived, he said he wanted to see this "flower market in Aalsmeer" he'd read about in his book. Amsterdam has a handful of flower markets, including the famous 'floating' market, but the market in Aalsmeer is less tents and shopkeepers and more of a market in the stock market sense.

The Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer is the giant auction house where over 6000 growers sell their flowers and plants to over 1000 buyers and exporters. The building itself is one of the largest in the world, with over 10 million square feet of space and its own rail line. Inside there are 4 large auction rooms where buyers use a high-to-low bidding method (more on that in a sec) to buy the flowers.

The flowers are stacked on carts and run through the room as two auctioneers talk about each flower, answer questions, and occasionally pull them out to demonstrate quality. In a typical day, the auction house sells over 20 million flowers and plants.

The bidding is controlled through computers and runs off this clock system, where the numbers are the price and it runs from high to low. This means the buyers try to wait for the price to drop, but the first bid sets the price. If you click on the picture below, you'll see a red dot at the 40 mark (around 5 o'clock on the clock face). The red dot travels from the 1 position (12 o'clock) counter-clockwise very, very quickly. This plant has just been purchased for 40 cents per plant. All the other numbers on the clock face list the quantity of plants and other information.

It is an incredibly fast system. There are over 60,000 sales a day and something like 300 transactions a minute (there are 4 auction rooms, each with two clocks). The flowers seldom stop moving through the room and the clock jumps directly to the next sale. It's a pretty calm system, though we did watch one guy maniacally jam his laptop as he tried to place a bid. He didn't get it.

There's not much to the tour. Mostly you walk along a catwalk above the floor and watch flower carts move here and there with occasional automated stations that explain the action. But the sheer volume of flowers makes it worth the trip. The market basically sets the prices for much of the European flower market and is a huge influence on the worldwide price of roses, as nearly 2 billion roses a year flow through Aalsmeer. Not a bad way to spend half a morning, if you don't mind getting up early to catch the bus. We'll get some more pictures on our Flickr page soon.

A Very Memorable Weekend

2008-03-03T16:50:00.005+01:00

This weekend we hosted Erika's cousin, Elizabeth, and her boyfriend, Peter. Elizabeth and Peter are both studying at Cambridge, so they are ridiculously smart and we tried to communicate with them through a series of grunting and pointing, and they helped by drawing pictures for us when we got too confused and trying to limit their vocabulary to 1- and 2-syllable words for us. Plus, Peter's actually British, so everything he says sounds intelligent anyway.

Anyway, we spent Saturday on Rob's patented Amsterdam Walking Tour and then they spent Sunday seeing the various museums in town. It was a great weekend, but not without a little excitement. Needing a break from the mindless walking and turning around (all part of Rob's patented tour), we decided to enjoy a nice canal cruise. The weather was nice enough and the views from the canals are quite lovely. We should have suspected something was amiss, when we first laid eyes on our Captain, The Ancient Mariner. He was a nice guy, but was somewhere between 90 and 150 years old. The way these tours work is that a tape plays in 4-6 languages pointing out various buildings and other attractions and The Captain waves his hand in the general direction of whatever the tape references. Everything was fine until one of the passengers decided to partake in one of Amsterdam's main attractions (not the one in the Red Light District. The other one.) We're not really sure what happened next, but suddenly, as we were making a 90 degree right turn into a narrow old lock, The Captain and The Stoner got into some sort of fracas at the front of the boat and one of them- we think The Stoner- triggered the fire extinguisher. Now, here is what these boats look like:

(Note, this is a pic of a different company's boat, not the boat we were on.)

So you see that the boat is encased in glass. When the fire extinguisher went off, it went off until it was empty, completely filling our boat with white smoke. There are tiny windows that slide open on every other seat and (the smart) people stuck their heads out to get some fresh air. Everybody else got up and ran to the front of the boat. In the meantime, The Captain had opened the door to let the smoke out, at which point The Stoner jumped through the door and onto the lock and walked off into the city like nothing happened. Oh, and the boat bumped into the lock pretty good, too. Luckily, all the crazy people now crowding The Captain at the front of the boat didn't seem to rock the boat or try to escape. A few minutes later the smoke dissipated and we were on our way. Everyone was laughing and standing and knocking the chemical powder out of their hair and clothing, but here was the most amazing part: The Captain continued to give the tour. The tape never stopped and as soon as he could steer again, he was right back with the pointing, like nothing ever happened! Or like it happened all the time... We were a little too concerned during the event to pull out the camera, but here's a pic of the residue:

Finally, the tour ended, everyone filed out (no tips for our man this time) and did a thorough pat down on the docks. The tourists that were waiting for the next boat suddenly weren't too sure they wanted to go and The Captain's coworkers all huddled around, trying to figure out what happened. We don't speak much Dutch, but it was pretty clear that even The Captain wasn't really sure. Some of the customers seemed to want some kind of explanation or recompensation, but we figured that was enough excitement for one day. Well, most of us did. We didn't get 50 yards away when Erika found herself on the receiving end of a pigeon's, um, delivery. Yeah. Poor Erika, covered in chemical powder, which we could kind of taste a little, and then besmirched by a flying rat.

But wait, it gets worse. These things always come in threes, and later that night as we ran to catch a tram, Erika tripped and dove, Superman-style, along the pavement. She's okay (though we did miss that tram). You know you've had a rough weekend when spending 3 hours on Sunday doing your taxes is the least stressful event. Still, despite all the bad luck, we had a great time showing Liz and Peter around and look forward to seeing them in England sometime. Though, maybe without the fire and the pigeon droppings, if that's not too much to ask.

Hungry?

2008-03-02T17:49:00.002+01:00

We'd like to introduce a new feature to our page: the Food we're eating list on the right (under the book list). We've gotten so many compliments on Erika's work in the kitchen, we wanted a way to be able to share more than just pictures. So, if you're so inclined, you can click on the listed meal and it will take you to a post with a recipe and maybe a picture or two of our attempt at it.

Life of Brian

2008-02-29T18:44:00.004+01:00

That's Brian- Rob's friend from their decade in college- and that's how fast he moved while he was here. In a week he saw six towns, plus Amsterdam. The guy had an agenda. Rob was so tired from trying to keep up that he didn't bother trying to post anything until Brian was gone. We toured Alsmeer for the flower market, Alkmaar and Edam for cheese, Haarlem for the culture, Maastricht for history, and Cologne for the church and an excuse to eat some German food. We'll post more stories and pictures soon, but first check out the Dead Baby Monkey Angel we saw mounted in a spooky store in Edam:

Creepy.

Too Early for the Beach?

2008-02-10T16:17:00.000+01:00

The weather this week has been just beautiful and we took advantage of the much needed sun and headed to the beach. The North Sea is about a half hour's drive from home, so we packed a lunch and loaded into the car with Jane, Michelle (our first repeat visitor!), and our friend Elizabeth. We found a nice bench and enjoyed sandwiches and some wine and then joined the other hundreds of pale Dutch folk drawn to the beach like moths to a flame for a good walk. Spring can't come soon enough!

Another Amazing Pasta Post

2008-02-06T14:04:00.000+01:00

Erika continues to amaze in the kitchen. This week she made ravioli, stuffed with mushrooms and ricotta. The new pasta maker, coupled with helper Jane (Rob still has his job pulling things off the top shelf, which he continues to be incredible at), has ushered in a new era of fantastic meals at home. Here, Erika scoops the ricotta onto the first layer of pasta:

The finished product, covered with a little ricotta and served with wine and veggies:

And, for those of you out there wondering where all the photos of our wonderful houseguest, Jane, are, well, Rob gave Jane photo (but not editorial!) approval and she is quick with the veto, leaving Rob dozens of pictures like this one of the girls on the tram:

So, we promise our friends in Portland that she is alive and well, but we can't offer much more in the way of photographic evidence...

Evil Construction Banner

2008-01-28T13:28:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-28T12:57:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-23T11:47:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-16T18:50:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-05T12:53:00.000+01:00

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.

2008-01-01T16:42:00.000+01:00

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.

A Ski Christmas!

2007-12-21T17:01:00.000+01:00

We're taking off soon for our Christmas vacation, so we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. We're going skiing in Austria (we know, we know, our life is very rough) and will be out of the loop for the next week. We will miss sharing the holidays with family and friends, but we're also very excited to get some skiing in. Here's a picture of our hotel and a link to the trail map:

Have a wonderful holiday and we'll be back soon with pictures and video!

Rob makes a grab for 'Favorite Uncle'

2007-12-18T22:24:00.000+01:00

On our way to Dresden, we stopped in Frankfurt one night in order to see our friend, Vicki, and her daughter, Denali. It was great to see Vicki, who was on her way home for the holidays and we were able to give Denali an early Christmas present:

If you can't tell, that's a Kitten scarf with matching Paw mittens. Yes, it's ridiculously cute and Denali pretty much refused to take them off all night. While Erika is technically Denali's godmother, Rob was utterly selfish and spent the whole evening playing with her, spoiling her rotten and keeping her to himself. Here, he teaches her how to climb out windows:

Denali narrowly avoids being eaten:

In the end, he wore her down completely, which allowed Vicki to enjoy her dinner and helped Rob maintain his favored status over some guy in New Jersey (you know who you are!)

My Christmas Market can beat up your Christmas Market

2007-12-18T20:37:00.000+01:00

This weekend took us to yet another German Christmas Market, this time in Dresden. Dresden is a beautiful old city in eastern Germany overlooking the Elbe River and the old-town district is absolutely stunning at night. We met some friends who flew in from London and spent two days alternating between freezing our toes off while walking through the market and stopping for Gluhwein or Grog and some of that oh-so-healthy German food. Dresden is nine hours away, which seems like a long way to go for a bratwurst, but the city puts on one of the best markets in the country. This year was the 573rd Dresden Christmas Market. Yeah. And look how huge it is:

This dwarfs the Aachen market and, for those of you who might get this reference, it's about 5 times larger than the Nuremberg Market. Luckily, we had already done most of the heavy shopping in Aachen, so we were able to enjoy the food and company rather than fight the crowd.

And now, the obligatory giant church photo:

This is the Frauenkirche, the giant Lutheran church in the center of the old town that has come to symbolize the rebuilding of Dresden after WWII. And this is the Lego version, which is almost as impressive as the real thing:

We've really enjoyed the markets- Erika was as excited as a kid on Christmas when we stumbled onto a small market wedged into a side-street on the first night in town and her eyes went wide when we found the giant Christmas 'pyramid' above. It's been a great way to get out and enjoy the holiday season while we're away from home. Look for more pics soon in our Flickr link on the right.

A little Christmas spirit

2007-12-12T21:11:00.000+01:00

We decided against a tree this year- the Dutch do have them and they seem to be a pretty popular tradition. But, we're going to be out of town for the week of Christmas and for a long weekend before that, so we decided instead to get a wreath. This isn't the greatest picture (Rob had a hard time keeping the shadow of his giant head out of the way) but it's decorated with crystal icicles we found in Aachen and, although it weighs a ton, the tiny nail it's hanging on has held up so far. Erika went crazy and decorated the windows, too, and now it feels a little more like Christmas in the apartment.

Ahh... Ahh... Aachen!

2007-12-02T17:48:00.001+01:00

...Gesundheit.

This weekend we traveled to Aachen, Germany to shop at the Christmas Market. Aachen is Germany's westernmost city, so while the city itself doesn't have much to offer tourists, the traditional German Christmas Market brings in all the Belgian, Dutch, and other neighbors. A Christmas Market is exactly what it sounds like: an insane mass of crazed people yelling in foreign tongues, elbowing each other for position at the front of the line to buy ornaments and sausage. And the little old ladies are the worst, because they look so sweet and kindly, but, in reality, they have the sharpest elbows- how else do you think they survived this long? (Hint: It's the elbows!)

Here, Erika works her way into the crowd:

Somehow, we survived the gauntlet and managed to enjoy ourselves. Several of our friends also made the trip, so we all shared in the bratwurst, gluhwein, and schnitzel. Gluhwein is a mulled red wine (Rob doesn't know what that means, either, but he likes it anyway) and is perfect for warming you up as you take a break from the elbows and the gnashing of teeth. We like it so much, we brought some home with us, along with some beautiful crafts and ornaments and even a "German Christmas Decoration Thing" for ourselves:

The candle-smoke turns the fan, which spins the figurines. And, yeah, it's as cool as it sounds. It has fire and wind and it's made out of wood! What could possibly go wrong?

The Late Thanksgiving Post

2007-11-27T13:40:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving was our first holiday away from home since the move and Erika's first ever away from home, so we weren't sure what to expect. Erika ended up working out of town on Thursday and Friday, so she spent the actual holiday eating Mexican food in a tiny town with a couple of coworkers. Then, over the weekend, she caught a nasty cold and spent most of Sunday and all of Monday sleeping. (She's feeling better now, though.)

However, somewhere, between the Mexican food and the Kleenex, we did manage to get in a nice little Thanksgiving. On Friday we went to a music festival and caught a couple of bands, including a singer/songwriter, Jenny Owen Youngs, who Erika and her friends were really excited about. (Rob liked the show, too, but mostly because she also sang this song.) Then, we went out for DISCO BOWLING! Well, it was called disco bowling, but Rob suspects it was really techno bowling since they didn't really play any disco...

On Saturday one of the bigwigs from Erika's office hosted a huge Thanksgiving dinner for the Americans and there was even some college football. The dinner was great and it was nice to celebrate with other people and eat some pumpkin pie. On Sunday we had another Thanksgiving dinner with our friend, Jon, and several of his Dutch friends, who were pretty much in awe of the vast amounts of food.

In the end, it was a pretty good Thanksgiving despite being away from our families. We had plenty to eat, saw most of our friends, and we learned that the Dutch really, really like sweet potatoes.

"Labor Rather Permitted"

2007-11-22T17:25:00.000+01:00

That's the literal translation on the back of Rob's shiny new residency/work permit, which he picked up today. So, the, ahem, six month vacation is nearly over as the search for a job begins. We don't really know what kind of job he'll land, but we are sure hoping he gets paid in Euro- the dollar is killing us over here!

Rob is definitely ready to get back to work, not that the vacation hasn't had its moments...

If you're wondering what to get Rob for Christmas...

2007-11-21T13:02:00.000+01:00

Isn't this so much better than a scarf?

It's Always Sunny in Barcelona

2007-11-13T16:14:00.000+01:00

It doesn't snow much in Amsterdam, but after getting hailed on last Friday, we sought refuge in Barcelona. Well, that would be a cool story- whenever it gets cold we jet off to the beach- but the truth is that Erika's firm has a week of "training" and Rob tagged along for the weekend. (Rob is pretty sure that it's all an excuse for a trip to Barcelona, but Erika assures him that somewhere between all the sangria and the sunshine there are conferences and classes to attend.)

The weather and the city were beautiful and like good tourists, we managed to see the obligatory giant European church, although the one in Barcelona is actually a lot different than most:

Mostly though, we had fun hanging out with our friend, Colleen, who was in the neighborhood visiting her cousin, who is studying in Spain. Together, we saw the Sagrada Familia basilica above and took a gondola to the park that overlooks the city. Here, Erika enjoys the view:

Not everything went according to plan, however. Our friend, James, was supposed to join us and couldn't, so the girls mourned his absence over a few dozen drinks. James, you were missed.

Still, it was another great trip and Erika gets to hang out in Spain all week, "training" with the firm. Here she is, hard at work on her siesta:

Killer of an Advent Calendar

2007-11-08T11:24:00.000+01:00

Does everybody know what an advent calendar is? Rob's family spent so much time in Germany when he and his brother and sister were kids that he's not sure if it's a mostly German thing or if it's universal. An advent calendar can take many forms, but for Rob it is a box of chocolates with one chocolate for each day of advent (each day in December leading up to Christmas, for you heathens). Each chocolate is behind its own cardboard window and every day you find and eat (for breakfast, preferably) one delicious chocolate in solemn anticipation of the coming celebration of Christ's birth. (Actually, the best part is when you forget about it for a few days and then have to eat three or four pieces of delicious chocolate in solemn anticipation of the coming celebration of Christ's birth. Plus, when your little brother is six years younger than you, he doesn't always know what day it is, so you can..., um, wait, that story doesn't exactly fit with the Christmas spirit... Nevermind.)

Anyway, the calendars are usually decorated with Christmas imagery or winter scenes, or a house with 24 windows, etc. But then there's this article (click to read):

"What says Christmas like a serial killer?"

How about that? Here's the pic:

And they say Germans don't have a sense of humor...