Off The Deep End

We had one full day on our own in the city. We hit the bikes and headed out. First to a market, then a local coffeeshop before visiting the Van Gogh Museum. The special exhibit there was amazing. It was all about the effect of night and evening scenes on impressionistic painting. Obviously Starry Night was the focus of the exhibit, but what I found the most interesting was the obvious inflfuence of earlier painters on Van Gogh. The way they structured the exhibit was chronological so you could easily see the effect of early Millet on the work of Van Gogh.

While in Patagonia we meet a young man from the Dutch city of Naarden. He was quite funny and we kept running into him everywhere we went until the joke became that we were stalking him. On one occasion he showed us his city on Google Earth and we were blown away, he lives in a walled, moated fortress! Naarden at least the old part is built inside a walled area surrounded by two moats. Gidion's parents live in a house right in this part of Naarden.

The weather has been so good here that Jammie and I decided to take a bike ride around the area. Christine showed a few of her favorite routes, one takes you out to the dunes and the beach another heads north and then loops around through the green spaces so common in this country. No matter how densely populated the cities are the land use planing in The Netherlands has been focused on preservation of green spaces. Little farms and common areas dominate the country side.

On Easter Sunday we were slated for a family visit to Frank's parents' house. However they all thought that since we were in the area Jammie and I should check out the Hoge Veluwe National Park. At this park they have tons of biking trails and they even have racks upon racks of free bikes for you to use in the park.

On Saturday we went down to the big market in Haarlem. Along the way we picked up some frites complete with mayonnaise, mmmm, delicious. Pushing on we went to the liquor store. This place is awesome! So much liquor at reasonable prices. And the beer selection! One of the helpful employees showed us which of the local brews were most like IPAs. He helped us pick out four or five different brews to sample, we will definitely be back to this place several times!

After flying all night we landed in Amsterdam at around 10 AM. We thought that Su would be there before us and would meet us in baggage claim, no Su. After heading to the information office and paging her on the overhead intercom we thought to check the arrival board. To our surprise we discovered her flight was landing at that moment. Not only that, but I spotted Christine, Frank and baby Lucas waiting for us at the door. Jammie and I snuck up behind them and struck glam poses to see how long they would stand there without noticing us.

Before leaving on our next adventure I was scheduled to work for three days. We flew out of Bozeman on a Thursday so I had told Steve I could work Monday through Wednesday. Then the unthinkable happened, Bridger extended their ski season. I had planned my return to MT to coincide with Bridger's closing weekend, but it turned out my cousins were in town and so I sacrificed skiing Sunday to spend time with family. I had thought that therefore I would miss out on skiing, but Bridger decided to stay open and extra week.