Hotel De Koophandel Delft

Well, the trip has finally started! After getting up way too early (nerves I guess) and repacking my backpack twice, I traveled to Schiphol. I tried to get a seat with enough room for my legs, but unfortunately those seats were already reserved. (So why does it say on the China Airlines website that those seats cannot be reserved?) Here we (a friend of mine who's also going to Bangkok and I) enjoyed a last meal on Dutch soil (a nice tosti) and afterward we boarded the Boeing 747 to Bangkok.

... on our way.

We drove through Rotterdam and headed for the islands. We made an impromptu stop on a cute little island. Well, it's sort of an island. It is attached to two other islands via land bridges but I believe they are man-made so I'm going to call it an island! Anyway, on the North side of this little island is a beach that stretches it's length. We parked the car, rolled up our pants, and dug our flip-flops out of the ...

... We wandered around a bit more,
stopped and had another drink and then headed back to the room. Some
laundry, blogging and relaxation and we were ready to head back out
for dinner, tonight deciding that we would do Mexican. We found the
Mexican restaurant and had a nice change of pace meal and soon headed
back to the room to ready for our last travel day of the trip and on
our way to our last stop, Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam.

... glad to be here to witness it. It stormed most of the night with intermittent pounding rain, bellowing thunder and frightening lightening. Not a very peaceful night for sleeping. Tomorrow we are off to teach her English students again. Thanks for your comments and keeping up with the blog. I am enjoying it much more than I thought I would; I hope you are enjoying it as well.

... think. I was tempted to hire a bike before I saw how the average dutch cyclist drives them here - as a pedestrian you really have to watch out for them - they show no mercy and obviously have the right of way! I was staying right next to the flower market, so very central and easy to find after frequenting a drinking establishment! I'll put up some pictures at the weekend Ronnie

... aussi une station-service. C'est quand même comique de pouvoir, dans un même commerce, acheter un becique de 3000$, du gaz pis un paquet de cigarettes en même temps.....hmmmmmmm. Autre fait divers: l'habillement des cyclistes en Hollande.....Jacket en tweed, chemise blanche, pis des souliers en cuir...sweet! Je ne vous niaise pas pantoute. Cette description précise est celle d'un homme assez ag ...

... had shown to us. We also said we could not go to sleep until we had unpacked a suitcase. Right at 9 PM, we both could barely keep our eyes open because of the jetlag and finally decided it was okay to go to sleep!!! We head off to Vrije University tomorrow to get Jonathan into his office and to meet the people he will be working with! Exciting!!! (Mom and Yvette, I've posted some pics of our apartment for you!)

... at 8:00 a.m. where we opened presents and had breakfast. Nate and Andrea were thrilled to have received many wonderful gifts including some of their favorite foods from America and also some ski gear for our upcoming trip. We then headed to church. It's a really quick bike ride, but since we were with the fam we walked... 30 minutes later we arrived! Luckily we were on time and we really enjoyed the service. The Pastor met our family beforehand and ...

... commuting to see her, the entire country can pay their last respects. I doubt anyone in the US would travel a long distance to see Reagan when he passes but I'm guessing many (especially Republicans) would travel an hour to see him. Anyways, we were glad we went to see this. Julie picked up a hot chocolate (see Pic 9) and we walked back to the main shopping street to find some lunch. As we walked back, we noticed that most of the store windows had a pictures of Princess ...

... I was able to get some ceramic dutch wooden shoes for some family members. Afterwards we traveled to the city of Delft (I believe the Delft pottery factory and town were somewhat separate). I loved the city of Delft - I saw the locks that are in Van Gogh's paintings (I don't know if they are the exact locks but it was like that..), tents with fresh produce and plants (tulips!) I remember ...