Hotel Jo van den Bosch

... but the older people in the 70+ retirement crowd absolutely look like they are being dragged face down over the finish line to death's doorstep. Seriously, I do not like to say something so bad about anyone (especially people who have earned respect by being older) but I have honestly never seen such an unhealthy bunch of seasoned citizens who walk without bending their hips or knees and who just look like they are in severe pain. It depressed me to see people who should ...

I went to Utrecht last weekend. Utrecht is a city in the Netherlands that takes about 30 minutes by train from Leiden. (btw, I'm loving the train system here - why doesn't california and every else in the US have such great public transportation??). Utrecht reminded me of a larger Leiden. They have a University & canals & more people than Leiden. We, for the most part, just walked around. It was a beautiful day. I also a got a sandwich ...

New traveloque, new period in my life. New 'old' destination, my home country. After traveling for 3 months with my motorbike through Scandinavia, I arrived safe and sound at my brother's place, Vlijmen. All in all been on the move for about 1,5 years now. Already have more traveling trips in mind. But... ...time to touch base first! Working in the chocolate shop of my parents for a few months, busy December period coming up again ...

... drive from quiet far south in The Netherlands where we live to the very North of the country takes a whole 2 hours !!!!!! - no they dont have flying cars its just a small country - or is australia just incredibally big ??? Anyway , we were on the free way following the rest of the team when the battery in the red rocket decided it didnt want to go all that way North , we managed to get off the free way at utrecht with the car desperatly trying to ...

... post 10pm food outlet - a friendly kebab man who made us a suprisingly tasty pizza. We shamefully carried our booty into the nice hotel past the strange dutchman, supplemented it with chocolate bars from the vending machines with our remaining 10 cent coins, and then devoured the lot whilst watching campers being evacuated from flooded campsites on the local news. Maybe staying in a hotel was the right move after all...

It is said by many a wise man that you can't see any country in a few weeks, let alone a few days. That wise man has not been to The Netherlands. That wise man has not met Lars. A stay with Lars and Leoneke means you can see the whole country in a weekend and have time to spare for a wine or two. For those with indifferent memories or who are astute enough to simply tune out when I talk, I worked with Lars at Microsoft a couple of years ago. Lars was the ...

... a little blasé about churches and even medieval towns like Utrecht because we headed back to the car park shortly after, [ And this is where we stumbled across the vinyl market which made up for the disappointments of the day before except that I can't buy any...can I! ] grabbed a bread roll each for lunch and drove out of town. Not without a little drama. We were pulled over by a plain clothes cop in ...

... of celebration seemed to be going on and there was a horse drawn carriage going up and down the street. My sense is that the horses are not too well treated. They were clomping up and down the bike path, which is not wide enough for the horses - just wide enough for the carriage. Headed down towards Laurenskerk, just outside of the bombed areas. It was bombed but not completely destroyed - hollowed out, I'd say. It was built during the years 1449-1525. In 1572 the church ...

... morning I was surprised how empty everywhere was, streets and shops. Manchester at that time is far busier, but the economy is depressed in the Netherlands. The landmark building in Rotterdam is the Erasumus Bridge, which is a lot bigger than it looks on photos. 2 mile warm up, 4x90sec intervals, 90sec jog recovery, 1 mile warm down: 4 mile total

... enjoyed listening to Amst**dams church bells...they played beautiful melodies at the most p**fect moments. And yes they w**e real, not just in my head (like some people who heard music in their head aft** visiting a coffeeshop...no, I just heard voices ;)) I got to visit Vondelpark which was basically an ev**yday woodstock environment back in the 60s/70s. Now it is still quite beautiful but I think you are not allowed to ...