Just a quick note to promise that, despite appearances, I won't be abandoning this blog entirely now that we're home! Since our arrival back in Oregon on August 6 we've been quite busy settling in, seeing family and friends, finding an apartment, setting up house, unpacking all the stuff we put in storage or sent from Europe, marveling at the hugeness of everything, and the like.
And finally, in the last week I've been able to get back to work on Sacred Destinations full time, which is something I've really been looking forward to. I'm so excited to get the best of our gazillion photos from Europe captioned and published (which will take months!), as well as lots of new articles and new features.
So now that our whirlwind European adventure is over and we're not doing as much sightseeing, most of my publishing work will be over at the main website - but I do have some more blog posts planned, including some illustrated "best of" lists from our trip! I'll also post occasionally with brief news about new stuff on my website and sacred sites in general.
In the longer term, we will definitely be doing more traveling worth blogging about. Currently highest on the agenda are the western states, Japan and Scandinavia. Watch this space!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Leavin' on a jet plane
Well, we've had a great few days in Amsterdam and are so excited to head home to the States in the morning!! We're really glad we chose to fly out of Amsterdam Schiphol - it's an excellent airport. It has always worked smoothly on our previous visits and there are lots of great shops and restaurants to wander around. We've already checked in electronically and scoped out our departure point, so here's hoping everything goes as well as we expect it to tomorrow!
One of the best things about the airport is this panoramic terrace with a view of all the airplanes! It is so fun.
David enjoying the view
The plane that takes us home might be one of these
Or one of these. Our flight is jointly operated by KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) and NWA (Northwest) so it could be either one. We do know it's an Airbus A330, which is on the small side for a transatlantic flight but we like that.
Our hotel, the CitizenM, is very fun.
As advertised, it really is only 1-2 minutes walk to the airport, which is awesome. Under a covered walkway, too!
Our room is as small as expected, but it is so well designed that it's not claustrophobic. It comes with lots of fun gadgets, including a nice flat-screen TV with about 60 channels and free movies! We also have a Philips "Moodpad", a hand-held touch-screen gadget that controls the TV, music, blinds, lighting (available in many colors), and temperature. David loves it.
The bed takes up one end of the room and is absolutely huge - a big, comfy square of 2 meters by 2 meters, complete with fluffy white duvet and lots of pillows.
View from the bed of the rest of the room. There's a pod for the toilet (right) and one for the shower (left) - highly unusual, but it works!
The room and entire hotel are filled with clever little messages, all in English. The one at the top of this post is in the elevator.
Sometimes the design is just a little too creative, such as these signs on the bathroom doors in the lobby. It took some squinting to determine which one is the ladies!
Aside from entertaining ourselves in our hotel and at the airport, we've also found time to do some last-minute packing and take the train into Amsterdam for an afternoon.
The city was a whole lot more crowded now than when we visited in November! This is the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) on the wonderfully named Dam Square.
Canal
Street in the Red Light District, with Bulldog "coffee shop" up ahead. We walked through here on our way to revisit the Oude Kerk, which is in the heart of the district (and no longer functions as a church). We didn't linger long, as it's all rather seedy and we did enough gaping at the women in the windows on our last visit.
Oude Kerk (Old Church)
The main reason I wanted to visit it again is to take some photos of the weird and wonderful misericords, which I somehow missed the first time around.
So that concludes my last blog post from Europe! But I hope we'll still do enough interesting things back home worth writing about every once in awhile, and of course Sacred Destinations will be updated a great deal over the next few months with more of our photos and experiences!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Delft, Leiden & Amsterdam
Tomorrow morning we leave Delft for Amsterdam, our last stop in Europe! It is pretty exciting to be getting so close to the home journey.
Oostpoort (East Gate, c.1400 AD) in Delft
The second half of our week in Delft has been as pleasant as the first, consisting mostly of relaxing days around town plus a nice day trip to Leiden and The Hague. We've had a few more pancakes, a few more canal walks, and lots more easy conversations in English. We will definitely miss peaceful little Delft, but we are looking forward to Amsterdam and even more to coming home.
Leiden
It was fun to revisit Leiden, as we had spent a day there in November 2006 and liked it. We still liked it this time around, but not as much as Delft. It's mainly because Leiden is a bigger city and therefore more crowded, a little dirtier, and less peaceful. But it also has lovely canals and bridges and interesting shops, plus several churches and museums.
Fast train at Leiden Central Station. Our train was efficient and on time, but old and stifling hot.
Outside of Leiden Central
Windmill
One of many canal scenes
Hooglandse Kerk, a Calvinist church like most in the Netherlands
A side street
National Museum of Antiquities, which I was so disappointed was closing for the evening on our last visit. This time it was open, and it was great! Mostly Egyptian, with some good Roman and other stuff as well.
Ancient Egyptian offering table
Egyptian coffin
We had dinner at the Oudt Leyden restaurant on the way back to the train station. It specializes in "the largest and best tasting pancakes in Leiden", which are served on huge Delft Blue ceramic plates. The sign outside mentioned that Sir Winston Churchill and the Dalai Lama have eaten there.
The pancakes definitely lived up to the hype. They were large, and they were delicious. David had an "apple strudel pancake" with apples, raisins, cinnamon and almond paste.
I got the banana and powdered sugar pancake, and it was to die for. On the small plate is a Dutch side dish with a great name we hadn't heard of before: kwekkeboom bitterballen. They were kind of gravy-ish inside. Interesting and not bad, but the pancakes took priority and we only ate a couple.
The big Delftware plates were available for sale for €45, so it's a good thing we didn't break them! I thought I might like to buy a more authentic big plate back in Delft, but they are hand-painted and cost around €500. Whoa.
We had a bit of an adventure on the way home, as our train stopped at The Hague and we all had to get off, due to a problem down the line. Thankfully, The Hague is only about 10 miles from Delft and we were able to take a tram the rest of the way. We weren't the only ones who did, so it was a very crowded, hot tram. But it was otherwise nice, and it gave us a chance to see a little bit of The Hague, which is a big, shiny, busy city.
Off to Amsterdam!
The final three nights of our Big European Adventure will be spent at the CitizenM, a brand-new hotel at the Amsterdam Schiphol airport. Estimated walking time to the airport terminal from the hotel: 1 minute! It's a budget hotel but a very interesting designer one, with pods and mood lighting and all kinds of modern gadgets.
Groovy though it may be, the hotel room is very small, so we probably won't be spending too much time there. Fortunately the airport also has a train station, so it will be very easy to go into Amsterdam to keep busy until we get on the plane Wednesday morning! Woo!!
Oostpoort (East Gate, c.1400 AD) in Delft
The second half of our week in Delft has been as pleasant as the first, consisting mostly of relaxing days around town plus a nice day trip to Leiden and The Hague. We've had a few more pancakes, a few more canal walks, and lots more easy conversations in English. We will definitely miss peaceful little Delft, but we are looking forward to Amsterdam and even more to coming home.
Leiden
It was fun to revisit Leiden, as we had spent a day there in November 2006 and liked it. We still liked it this time around, but not as much as Delft. It's mainly because Leiden is a bigger city and therefore more crowded, a little dirtier, and less peaceful. But it also has lovely canals and bridges and interesting shops, plus several churches and museums.
Fast train at Leiden Central Station. Our train was efficient and on time, but old and stifling hot.
Outside of Leiden Central
Windmill
One of many canal scenes
Hooglandse Kerk, a Calvinist church like most in the Netherlands
A side street
National Museum of Antiquities, which I was so disappointed was closing for the evening on our last visit. This time it was open, and it was great! Mostly Egyptian, with some good Roman and other stuff as well.
Ancient Egyptian offering table
Egyptian coffin
We had dinner at the Oudt Leyden restaurant on the way back to the train station. It specializes in "the largest and best tasting pancakes in Leiden", which are served on huge Delft Blue ceramic plates. The sign outside mentioned that Sir Winston Churchill and the Dalai Lama have eaten there.
The pancakes definitely lived up to the hype. They were large, and they were delicious. David had an "apple strudel pancake" with apples, raisins, cinnamon and almond paste.
I got the banana and powdered sugar pancake, and it was to die for. On the small plate is a Dutch side dish with a great name we hadn't heard of before: kwekkeboom bitterballen. They were kind of gravy-ish inside. Interesting and not bad, but the pancakes took priority and we only ate a couple.
The big Delftware plates were available for sale for €45, so it's a good thing we didn't break them! I thought I might like to buy a more authentic big plate back in Delft, but they are hand-painted and cost around €500. Whoa.
We had a bit of an adventure on the way home, as our train stopped at The Hague and we all had to get off, due to a problem down the line. Thankfully, The Hague is only about 10 miles from Delft and we were able to take a tram the rest of the way. We weren't the only ones who did, so it was a very crowded, hot tram. But it was otherwise nice, and it gave us a chance to see a little bit of The Hague, which is a big, shiny, busy city.
Off to Amsterdam!
The final three nights of our Big European Adventure will be spent at the CitizenM, a brand-new hotel at the Amsterdam Schiphol airport. Estimated walking time to the airport terminal from the hotel: 1 minute! It's a budget hotel but a very interesting designer one, with pods and mood lighting and all kinds of modern gadgets.
Groovy though it may be, the hotel room is very small, so we probably won't be spending too much time there. Fortunately the airport also has a train station, so it will be very easy to go into Amsterdam to keep busy until we get on the plane Wednesday morning! Woo!!
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