Hotel Johannes Vermeer 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.

... that in Flemish).

However, before we had a chance to leave, the sky opened up and started to pour rain. There was thunder and lightning that shook the covered patio that we were sheltered under. There was no way we were venturing out in that mess, so we settled in for dessert and coffee. After a while, the downpour petered off to a light drizzle so we paid our bill and made a mad dash for our B&B before the deluge resumed.

... are rare occurrences!

One thing to note about buying tickets for the trains in the Netherlands - you can't pay by card if you don't have a Dutch bank card. The only other option if the ticket office is closed, is to have a collection of coins for the machines - they don't take notes either! There's plenty of ATM's which can be used, but for some reason, the Dutch train station machines won't accept non-Dutch cards.

... started a brand new day. We took the train from Amsterdam's airport to Delft (9.4 Euro). The Netherlands is quite beautiful. Everywhere you go there are small canals and you can see the occasional windmill. Delft is impressive due to its diversity of transportation. There are thousands of bikes, mopeds, people walking, boating in the canals. Name it and you will see it. I will write more about this later.

... It was an enormous amount of information to digest. 80% of the flowers come from Holland. 80% of the flowers are then exported to every corner of the globe, Australia included. What else could we expect but such statistics from a man who has been mayor of Aalsmeer for 30 years? Joost explained that in Holland, being mayor is a ...

... shop only this one has "the diary of Anna Frank" in every edition and language... After that we went to the nearby Pancake shop where we had a delicious salty pancake lunch and set off for the Van Gogh Museum. Personally I don't care much about impressionists. They all look like child's paintings to me. But Van Gogh has also drawn some Chinese drawings and that's what I was after. Pointless....There was an ...

Clare: Just some photos of my leaving do last Thursday night (and Friday morning) for those who couldn't make it. I had a great night and thank you all so much for the lovely card and great presents, will keep me away another month at least! Hope to see most of you in 2007, until then I hope you enjoy reading the entries (just for when you need a break from Communicator of course...)

Hi Everyone! We bring you good news- Nate officially passed all of his classes this semester and he has time off till Feburary! Andrea also has the next 3 weeks off from nannying, so hopefully our travel blog entries will be a little more exciting than they have been! Andrea's family will be arriving Christmas day and we are looking forward to celebrating with them. We will show them ...

... her 3rd daughter. The Canadian government declared the hospital room as sovereign Dutch soil so that the new princess would not have splint citizenship. I thought that was cool. *** As a result of having a daughter (the 4th one) with an eye problem, Juliana started to get involved in New Age teachings and even let her guru influence her annual addresses to the nation. Juliana started to believe that there were aliens on Earth and hugged and talked to trees. Kinda ...

... some time with the neighbors - talking, laughing, playing games, and eating paprika chips! They rock!!! We went back to our homestay family's house - I gave them a small photoalbum of some pictures I had taken around my town back home. The sun went down and our homestay parents told their kids to go to sleep. I almost thought - it's still early! But really, the sun went down and it was about 11pm!