Happy Halloween!

Katie and Fran reporting live from the scene where they are currently giving out candy to the neighborhood kids! Starting off slow, we've had only a few visitors so far, but there's plenty of time left! [ No that's really all that showed up. :-( ]

Katie went traditional for her carving this year, while Fran took his pumpkin in a different direction, going for the "scared of the bigger, meaner pumpkin" look.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Sweet Home Alabama

After a very long day of travelling, I made it home to Alabama late last night! It's very good to be home. After giving Katie her gifts of extremely unusual chocolates (sea salt and rosemary is one example) from a shop called Unlimited Delicious and tulip bulbs from the flower market, as well as showing off the cheeses and framed artwork I bought, it was time to settle in for a nice long sleep.

A Whirlwind Last Day in Amsterdam

Today was my last day in Amsterdam and I have an early afternoon flight to catch tomorrow back to the states. I wanted to make sure I took full advantage of my remaining time here, so I spent a long time last night planning out the usage of my day. The morning started with a breakfast of baked breads, jams and cheeses at a local bakery. From there, it was out for a morning of shopping in the Western Canal Belt and the Jordaan neighborhoods. I stopped to snap a few photos on my way...how could one ever tire of scenes like this one of houseboats on the canal?


Among my shopping targets was this cheese shop, De Kasskamer. How fabulous is this shop? I was in heaven in there, and came out with my shopping bag substantially heavier and my wallet substantially lighter!


After dropping the morning parcels back off at the hotel, I walked down to the Museumplein, where I enjoyed the park a bit before heading into the Van Gogh Museum. Here's a photo of the amsterdam sign (It really says "I amsterdam" - as in "I am amsterdam" - but it's not all photoed here).
The Van Gogh museum was excellent. When I think of Van Gogh I think of wheatfields, but I learned that this was just his later work in a career that features all sorts of diverse painting styles (did you know he had a period where he was influenced by and even copied Japanese artists?)

After the Van Gogh, I went to the meeting spot for the bike tour. A very cheery Kiwi by the name of Lucy was our tour guide, and she gave an expert history level while we stood on the Museumplein before heading to pick up our bikes.

Lucy was full of interesting facts. Just on the topic of legalized prostitution alone she was very informative - since it is a legalized business here that requires registering the business with the government, she was saying that this has interesting financial consequences - did you know that prostitutes in Amsterdam file taxes, can expense any products they buy to use in their business, and can seek out business improvement loans for plastic surgery!

The route took us along the Amstel River to the outskirts of town and beyond, into the cow fields that lie along the dyke. One interesting thing to see was that the surrounding cow pastures were below the water level of the Amstel, kept dry only by the small dyke on which we were biking.

We stopped at a 350 year old windmill, now a residence. Yes folks, I've now officially been to Holland...



The windmills were not used for what you might think. They were used to pump out the water to make the land. 1/3rd of the Netherlands was once under water. The Dutch devised an ingenious system to drain the water with the use of wind power and dykes long before electricity was available.

Our next stop was a cheese farm. Here is a farm worker explaining the process to us.


The farmer also spends his time making clogs. Nowadays it's all made by machine and a shoe takes about 2 minutes to make. Here he is demonstrating the process.


The ride back along the Amstel was tranquil.


To round out the tour, we stopped at a Pub in one of the many squares around town - this is the Leidseplein.


On the tour I met my new friends Marcus and Kylie from Australia. We decided to go on the Heineken brewery tour. The tour was awesome - but I'm not sure I learned anything about how to make beer. However, we did learn what it's like to be a beer bottle (which required that we stand on a moving platform and hold on tight), what it's like to deliver beer around town by horse (which required that we seat belt ourselves into the ride), and what it's like to DJ (see, because you DJ at a club, and you serve beer at a club, so it's a natural...or something) in a big simulated dance club. We also saw trippy videos, send video email back to Katie and Dana, and enjoyed free beer in not one but two bars along the way. So, we're not sure exactly WHAT the Heineken Experience was, but we had great fun!

After that we met up again for dinner, in chinatown at a place our bike guide recommended. Our four dishes of food that we ate family style hit the spot after the bike ride. Finally, we finished up the evening with a tour of pubs around the city, including munchies stops for Amsterdam-style frites (french fries, with an amazing array of sauce choices - we went with a combo of mayonaisse and curry - it was tasty!) and apple turnovers.

All in all an incredible last day here. I've really covered a lot of ground in my short time here, and Amsterdam truly is a world class city. It has the canal charm of Venice, the cafe culture of Paris, some of the oldest remaining architecture in Europe, more museums per sq. mile than any other city in Europe and a laid-back atmosphere that relaxes you as soon as you start exploring the city. I can't wait to come back!

A Shopping Excursion

Today I went on a shopping excursion to the Southern Canal Belt area of town. I had a few specific destinations in mind as I was gift shopping for Katie. On the way, I passed some of the other parts of town that I had been wanting to see.

This is a view of the Singel canal. This is one of the prettiest canal shots I've gotten so far. I like the building facades in this photo. That's the floating flower market there on the right side of the canal.



This is quintessential Amsterdam - I loved taking this photo!



Carnival time in the Dam! If you look carefully, you can see the woman in the lower left hand corner that has pigeons landing on her as she feeds them!



This is just a cute menu I saw on the way. I liked it for the Sesame Street reference, but someone else clearly liked it for the prank potential...



My excursion was successful, as I found a framed print of an old map drawing of Amsterdam for the office, and a surprise gift for Katie!

Later in the day, I ventured back out for dinner. I decided to go to Nam Kee, which the guidebook said was the best chinese in town. It's in the red light district so I figured this would be an adventure. The red light district is nothing to get worked up about, as it turns out. It's basically a chinatown, with some sex shops and some brothels. There are tons of restaurants and pubs and lots of families out for Asian food. Maybe it changes later in the night, but really, it looked like any other nightspot in a big city. Which was fun, because there was a lot going on and lots of people out, and the chinese food was excellent! It was a good place to eat alone because there were communal tables, so you got to know your neighbors whether you wanted to our not. My neighbors ordered tripe, and then decided they didn't like it, and tried to make it sound appealing as they offered it to everyone around them including me, with no takers. We had a good laugh over that. :-)

Tomorrow is my last full day here, I will attend some conference events in the morning, but will have most of the day for touring the town, finishing up the shopping and hopefully taking a bike tour!

Amsterdam Update

No new pics - didn't leave the hotel today until after dark. Was up until 4am finishing off the slides for my talk. Overslept by 3 hours, rushed downstairs to salvage what I could of the morning sessions, caught lunch, and worked some more on my slides. Talk went fine! This conference is much smaller than its stateside siblings, so the crowd was smaller, but there were good questions asked and people seemed interested. Tonight we hit the town for an Argentinian steakhouse dinner, and I had a gigantic filet for a reward for all the hard work putting the talk together. :-)

I will do a bike tour either tomorrow or Thursday, and still have plenty of shopping to do! They also appear to be setting up a carnival right in the square in front of the hotel, which should provide more photo ops, so there will be more pictures coming starting tomorrow.

Some street scenes of the Southern Canal Belt neighborhood where I wandered tonight and ate pizza. :-)






Can't really see the detail of this facade too well, which is why I took the picture, but it was pretty neat.

Canal life in the Western Canal Belt

Here are a few photos of typical scenes I came across while walking around town.

Another view of the Dam

Dam square on Sunday afternoon

This is looking back across Dam square from the other side. Quite a difference from the morning, eh? The building in the back is my hotel.

The Dam square early Sunday morning

Old meets new in the sleepy Dam early on a Sunday morning. This is the National Monument and a tram in the background.



Blogger is being flaky with images, so I have to do these one at a time.

Walking Tour and Anne Frank's House

[Sorry, still no pics, should have some in another day]

Today I had intended to take a short nap when I got to the hotel, followed by a day on the town. Unfortunately, since I didn't sleep well on the plane, the "Short" nap was from 9am until 2:30pm! Oops. :-) So I rushed out at 2:30, and did a walking tour that was in my guidebook. The city looked a lot different than it did at 7:30am. What was a sleepy Sunday morning turned into a bustling weekend day. People were scurrying about in every direction across the Dam square. Bicycles EVERYWHERE (you really have to be aware of them, or else you'll get run over!)

The tour went through the Central neighborhood of town, along many of the canals. The shopping is clearly first-rate here, although some stuff that I was interested in was closed on Sundays, so I will be going back later this week. Canal life looks charming - houseboats line the sides of each canal, and they are kept up nicely, with patios of potted plants and nice roof decks with the owners lounging and eating and enjoying what was a fairly warm day for Amsterdam in October.

Sidewalk cafes are common, and the locals were all lounging over coffee and friends. Lots of dogs were out and about with their owners, and I passed some playgrounds full of kids. The nice thing is that the center of the city is still very residential, most of the walk went past rowhouses. So it's very active on the weekends.

Watching the canal traffic was fun. These are expert boatmen. The spaces are tight, especially the bridges. I watched a couple maneuver a boat with no hesitation through an arch that had maybe 6 inches of clearance on each side. You see all sorts of people in boats, even teenage girls going out for a day of shopping. The canals go everywhere and sometimes that must be the best way to get between places.

Halfway through the tour I came upon the Anne Frank house. The line wasn't very long so I waited and went on in. The tour was excellent. You went through Otto Frank's business offices and warehouse and meet some of the people who helped the family hide for two years in the secret annex above, which is where the tour went next. Climbing through the hidden entryway behind the bookcase, there I was in the middle of the actual home of Anne Frank. Through every room I went, and it is very well preserved. Up and down extremely narrow, extremely steep stairways to the different tiny rooms that housed eight people. Anne's room was stark, but she had decorated the walls with photos, which are still there. After touring the rooms, there is a new interpretive center attached where you learn more about everyone involved, and finally get to see her original diary. It was fascinating to see. Her writing was very neatly laid out on the page.

The experience is very moving. Throughout the exhibit they have video interviews with some of the helpers (including the woman who had saved Anne's diaries and presented them to Otto after the war) and with Otto Frank and a childhood friend of Anne's who, later in life when she was in a Nazi detention center, learned that Anne was also being held there in an adjacent yard over a fence. She learned that Anne had lost the rest of her family and was alone, so she would throw small packages over the fence to Anne. She was one of the last people to "see" (she couldn't actually see her through the fence) Anne alive. Anne died of typhoid while being held by the Nazis one month before the liberation, but you get a great sense from the museum just what a legacy she left behind through her diary.

On the way back to the hotel I found a major shopping thoroughfare, where all the clubgoers were shopping for their trendy clothes. Amsterdam is very much a clubbing and DJ town - lots of posters for events everywhere.

Back at the hotel I registered for my conference and grabbed a bite to eat in the lounge - I'll save the eating out on the town for after I make a few friends at the conference and can have some company. I did however venture back out for dessert on the town. On another half-hour walk, I managed to polish off both an ice cream cone and a chocolate croissant. :-)

Since I took a huge nap, I'm now wide awake and it's 3:45am. I've used the time wisely though, to work on my presentation. It is in much better shape now. I am going to try to catch a few hours of sleep now and make it through the tutorial I am attending in the morning. I figure a lunchtime nap (this time I'll set the alarm LOUD) and maybe a before-dinner nap, and I'll be pretty close to a normal schedule by the end of tomorrow.

Pictures tomorrow, I promise!

I have arrived in Amsterdam

After a long but uneventful travel day, I have arrived in Amsterdam. Initial impressions did not let me down, the town looks beautiful. The short walk from the train station to the hotel was very "17th century European" and the hotel is across the square from the Royal Palace. I also was upgraded to a suite for free, so that is another bonus. :-)

Unfortunately, I discovered that I didn't bring the card reader or the cable for my digital camera so there will be a delay in posting pictures, but there will be no problem come tomorrow, as this place will be crawling with techies with card readers. I should have some pictures up within 48 hours or so. Stay tuned!

Kunt u trager spreken alstublieft?

That's a Dutch phrase meaning "Can you speak more slowly please?" And that's a phrase that will come in handy next week when I make a visit to Amsterdam! I am travelling there to present a talk at EuroOSCON. The conference is being held in the heart of Amsterdam, and I will be there all week, so I will be sure to upload some photos to the blog while I am there!