merpel

It wasn’t foggy when I took this picture, but as it was very warm and humid outside (and colder and less humid inside) my camera lens fogged immediately when I went outside.

Earlier this week I finally finished the film that was still in my mother’s SLR since Paul and my road trip this summer. So I took it to get developed, scared because I hadn’t really used a proper camera in quite a while, and also because I generally just have no clue what I’m doing. I also had the films that I had already had developed put on CD, so now I have 83 black and white photos to sort out. Some need some work, especially the night photography from New Orleans, but still, I’m quite happy with the results. It also brings back good memories of California…

I’ve never complained about my life being boring, simply because I just have a very cool life. The past two weeks have again been full of exciting things. Such as getting to talk about my work during a presentation, in front of a camera for a little research video and in a phone interview for a research magazine. The weird thing about the talk at the colloquium was, was that it was in Tilburg and it’s honestly very weird to be back there while not working there anymore. I’m having a great time here in Amsterdam but I do miss the Tilburg campus. The VU campus needs more trees! Anyway, I’m also finding out more about the field I’m working in now, I’m starting to figure out which way to go for my project (I think, we have another project meeting tomorrow, so we’ll see if the rest of the project agrees ;)), I’m gathering data, working on a paper, preparing for another presentation etc..anyway so much about work though, as there is more to life, way more.

On the last day of October I went to the Efteling again. This time with my uncle. The Efteling always rocks! Afterwards we had dinner with Paul and my other uncle at Da Atillio in Breda. I slept the whole way on the train back to Amsterdam. The Sunday after I spent pretty much the whole day in bed again, not really ill, but definitely super-tired. Perhaps that’s because I’ve been cycling to work a lot (check it out here), or maybe because I just hadn’t fully recovered yet from the bug that I had caught a week earlier…

Last Friday we got to see a bit more of Amsterdam life at a party that a co-worker threw to celebrate his new kitchen (from which fabulous food emerged the whole evening). On Saturday night, Steve and Veronique came over for dinner and afterwards we went to the Amsterdam Museumnacht. If you’re too lazy to click the link, it’s a special evening, once a year, during which 42 museums in Amsterdam are open until 02:00 and have special programmes.

We started at FOAM, the Amsterdam Photography Museum, which is one of my favourites. It’s located in a gorgeous old building, but has a mix of old and new elements in its interior. We had to queue to get in and inside it was filled with hip and trendy people and fun things to do (such as commenting on photos via post-its). After FOAM we set out to the Museum of Bags and Purses (mainly a venue for Veronique and me but the boys seemed to enjoy it too). On the way to the handbag exhibitions, we popped into Museum Geelvinck, simply because it was on the way. The cool thing about and event like the Museumnacht is that you go to places you would normally not go to. Museum Geelvinck (it’s built in 1687 and the rooms are decorated in styles from that era) is nice, albeit a bit small and I would have liked more explanatory texts with things, but that’s personal. What’s also cool about it is that it’s run by volunteers and they have concerts on Sundays, so I will probably go back for that sometime. The Museum of Bags and Purses was fun, again located in one of those gorgeous canal houses and there was a lot to see. They also had bags and purses for sale but those were rather pricey (besides the fact that I prefer rucksacks ;)).

When we left the bags and purses, it was just past 22:00, so we could go to the Amsterdam city archives, located in an old bank. The reason we wanted to go there after 22:00 is that at that time musicbloggers would start playing music to a flickr expo of photos of Amsterdam. Maybe we were there too early, but it hadn’t yet turned into the party I’d hoped it would be. Fortunately, there was plenty of other stuff to see. Downstairs in the building you walk through the enormous door that used to lock the safe to an exhibition area and a film room. In the film room, acoustic bands were playing and their concert was filmed and projected on a big screen at the same time.

After a while we got tired (and thirsty) so we decided to go for a pub-break. We ended up in a pub at the Rembrandt square, which is actually my least favourite square at night (full of police and chavs). But at least the sofas were comfy, the wine was decent and we got to observe some funny people. At around midnight, we arrived at the special collections of the University of Amsterdam that was exhibiting their collection of 16th century cookbooks. They also had the staff of restaurant fifteen cook recipes from them, although we didn’t see or eat anything of that because we ended up at a presentation on the influence of Jewish food on New York today. Afterwards, we were too tired to party and see more (Steve and Vero also had to catch a train to Leiden) so we decided to call it a day.

On Sunday, Paul and I enjoyed a quiet day around Zeeburg. We didn’t have to do anything, so we just wandered around a bit, had coffee at Sissy-Boy (yes, awkward name for a shop for native English speakers) while reading magazines, we checked out some of the other shops on KNSM-eiland (now I know of at least one shop that still sells Levi’s 501 cut for women! They also have great dresses, but a tad expensive). I even worked on my thesis for a couple of hours, and in the evening we watched a few episodes of Californication (incredibly funny).

And now it’s Monday night again, and time for sleep as tomorrow we’ll have another busy day with work and two friends of Paul’s from the US happen to be in the Netherlands so in the evening we’ll meet up with them.

So after almost two months of living in Amsterdam the novelty is slightly wearing off. I’m not getting lost anymore on the way to work (which is handy) and I’m also shortening the time it takes to get to work (going from 40 mins, although that included putting my bike chaing back on twice to just under 32 minutes).I quite love being able to cycle to work again, especially towards the end of my project in Tilburg I was on trains too much. And it’s a great way to see more of the city. My new job is really nice too. It’s taken a while to get going, as I had a lot of reading up to because it’s not a computational linguistics group or a computational linguistics project, but it’s nice to work cross-disciplinary. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what direction the project should go, but I already have some ideas (too preliminary to share though).

Other than work, not much has been happening. The last week and a half of September I’ve been travelling back and forth between Amsterdam and Tilburg to discuss my thesis with an additional unofficial supervisor. This week I will see my supervisor again, so fingers crossed.. Last weekend we had our housewarming, where a lot of our new colleagues showed up as well as some of our new neighbours, so we had a house full of people. I think there will be many parties thrown at this house as it seems to have all the features for a good party location (space, close to the supermarket and the `glasbak’, easy to clean the next day, just parking is a bit of a pain). To be honest, I haven’t seen much of the Amsterdam city centre yet, or any of the pubs or cafés, which is a little bit of a bummer, but will sort itself out once we get Paul’s bike fixed. We’ve mostly been hanging around Zeeburg really, which is quite cool too. The last weekend of September there we got to watch the iShares cup,  an extreme sailing contest, just around the corner from where we live, how cool is that?

After years of vague plans revolving around mum and me going on a citytrip, we finally went on Sept. 18. It wasn’t easy picking a destination as there are still so many cool places we haven’t seen, but Liverpool was high on mum’s list because she is a Beatles fan and had never been there. I nearly didn’t make it on time to the airport because I always leave home too late (funny how I always underestimate how long it takes to get there, I guess it’s because I live pretty close to the airport, just not close enough). When I got to the train station my train was rerouted so it wouldn’t stop at Schiphol, and the second one was delayed, but fortunately I still made it on time. Around 4pm we touched down at John Lennon International Airport (that’s where the Beatlesmania starts already :)) and a bus took us past Penny Lane into the city. I had found a really nice hotel between the two cathedrals (Liverpool has not one, but two cathedrals, one Anglican and one Catholic, a stone’s throw away from each other). After dropping off our stuff and inspecting our underground snazzy cocoon bedroom we went for a walk through town. Sadly, the shops were closed but there was still enough to see (especially funny people). We passed the Cavern Club, where the Beatles used to play, but didn’t go in just yet as we were pretty hungry. We found a very cool (and cheap!) vegetarian restaurant called the Egg Café, just off the main roads in the city centre. After we stuffed our faces with great salads and vegetables and I had a huge bowl of truly splendid apple crumble, we set out to find a bus that would take us towards Penny Lane again to meet up with Jilly in a pub. I hadn’t seen Jilly since she visited me in LA, so it was great to catch up. Before we found our bus stop we passed St. Luke’s church that had been bombed out in the Second World War (nothing too special). The cool thing that drew our attention was that the church was used as an open air cinema where people sat on the grass and on benches watching `Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, thanks to Urban Strawberry Lunch. Very cool. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay, but we were happy we got a little taste of the event.

Thanks to my GPS we got off the bus 50 metres from the pub where we were to meet Jilly and Peter. After a drink at the Richmond Tavern we moved to the Penny Lane wine bar where we stayed until closing (11 pm that is). It was OK that the pub closed early because the next day we wanted to get up early to go see all the sites in Liverpool. We met Jilly and Peter again in the morning as they would show us around town. While we were waiting for them I found a geocache that was just around the corner from our hotel (sadly I didn’t manage to find any of the other ones as it was too busy around them or already getting dark). We first went to the ‘old’ cathedral (it wasn’t finished until 1978 so it’s not that old, but it’s older than the Catholic cathedral). During lunch, Dave found us. He had come up from Malvern to visit a friend first and then hung out with us the rest of the day. The rest of the day we visited pubs (including one near the cathedral where John Lennon used to go to), the Albert Dock, and the shopping centre (although we didn’t shop, yet). Around 6pm we said goodbye to Dave who was going back to Malvern, and Jilly and Peter drove us past Strawberry Fields and through Penny Lane. Then Jilly cooked us a lovely dinner at their house while Peter showed us around the garden and the house.

On Sunday we explored the city on our own. In particular the shopping district. Mum instantly developed a appreciation for GAP, the 30% discount on the jeans probably greatly attributed to that. After we tried on dozens of pairs of jeans and finally decided on a few items (mum a few more items than me), we happily proceeded to the Tate Liverpool. The best thing about our visit to the gallery was a long chat with one of the attendants who knew a lot about Liverpool, architecture, modern art and New York and was very keen on sharing his knowledge with us. It even made me look different upon some of the representations of performance art. Our favourite quote (and possibly take-home message) from our ‘Tate host’ was “That’s what art’s all about, isn’t it? It’s trying to understand how we bloody think.”

Anyway, after the so-called `high’ arts, we made our way back to the Cavern Club and this time we actually went in. We were amazed at how cheap the drinks were (actually everywhere in Liverpool, Dutch pubs could learn from this!) as one would expect the Cavern is pretty much the most touristy place in the whole of Liverpool. And there was live music. I’m afraid I forgot the name of the guy, but he was pretty good, playing Beatles and Kinks covers and some of his own work (naturally the Beatles were received best by the audience). At around 7pm we got a bit hungry so we went to find some food again, because we didn’t want to fall into a tourist trap (although we’d had good experiences the whole weekend) we decided to be lazy and go to the Egg Café again. Again very reasonably priced and tasty food :). On the way back to the hotel we stopped by the Philharmonic pub. We didn’t venture into the men’s rooms to see the marble urinals as Peter suggested, but fortunately the BBC has some pictures of it. The bar and the seating areas of the pub are quite splendid too though.

As our flight wouldn’t leave until 17:30 on Monday, we pretty much had the whole day still to see and do stuff. So after breakfast (muesli and yogurt for me, toast for mum and tea for us both) we set out to the Beatles museum. I was wrong in thinking the Cavern was the most touristy thing in Liverpool, it’s the Beatles museum. But still, it’s a cool museum, nicely designed with lots of goodies, music and info. On the way out, I did what I always do when I’m in a touristy mood, which is buy a t-shirt (although it’s actually a nice t-shirt and not too obviously touristy or Beatles-y, anyway, everyone has their vices). We stopped by Tesco’s to buy the latest Dan Brown (at about half of what it costs in the Netherlands, affordable books are yet another thing Dutch society has to learn about), some goodies such as tea and Tesco’s homebrand coconut conditioner and lunch. As the weather was still great we had lunch in the courtyard of the Bluecoat, an arts centre in one of the very few old buildings in the city centre of Liverpool. After lunch we shopped for a bit more, mum was again more successful than I was. Then it was unfortunately already time to pick up our bags at the hotel and catch a bus to the airport (well not really, but mum wanted to be the first one at the check-in desk (yes that is arriving at the check-in desk before it actually opens, something that normally never happens to me;))). Our flight went smoothly, and Hans and dad picked us up from the airport and drove me home to Amsterdam (where Paul was waiting with dinner) after which Hans, mum and dad went home to Etten-Leur.

Now the hard part starts: choosing a destination for next year :)

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. The most interesting thing: Paul’s and my move to Amsterdam (OK, officially we’ve moved, and we are kind of living here, but most of my stuff is still in Leiden). But anyway, we’re officially living together now :)

What’s happened in the past two weeks since our holiday. After a few days of adjusting to GMT+1, we set out on our househunt in Amsterdam. We checked out two places in Zeeburg and one in the city centre. All places were nice in a way, but the second one in Zeeburg really ticked all the boxes (spacious, outdoor space, cool design) so we decided to go for it. A week later we signed the lease and yesterday we moved some clothes in, registered with the city of Amsterdam and that’s why I’m sitting at my our kitchen table now listening to the marvellous sounds of the dishwasher doing its job, and working on my thesis and blog (not at the same time). We still need to move the rest of the stuff and tidy up a bit, but once that’s been done we’ll throw a housewarming :)

In the meantime I’ve also cleared out my office at Naturalis and handed in my badge and officially stopped working at Tilburg University (although on my first day of unemployment I went there, attended a meeting and met with my prof, so I haven’t really stopped working there).

Paul and I also visited the Efteling on Saturday, the last day it was open until midnight for this summer. The atmosphere was really great with bands playing everywhere and the gorgeous lights in the evening.  It was quite crowded (the weather was great although the forecast had predicted otherwise) but we still managed to do and see lots. It is really my favourite theme park.

Other than that life has been pretty relaxed. Hung out with Steve and Veronique and Judith (I need that delicious couscous recipe before you go to Skye again!), and traipsed around Leiden for a bit and now I’m going to get back to editing my masterpiece again!

Although the road trip wasn’t as exhausting as I thought it would be, it was really nice to stay in one place for 10 days, in particular because it was a very pretty place. Gulf Breeze and Pensacola are lovely beach towns near the Gulf of Mexico, which means gorgeous beaches and warm water :) It was really a holiday to relax and to hang out with Paul’s parents. Some highlights:

- every meal (great cooking by Paul’s parents and by friends of theirs, lunches made out of the previous night’s delicious leftovers, cute restaurants and bushwackers)
- going to the beach
- jet-skiing
- shopping
- just sitting and reading a book
- meeting Paul’s friends
- private tennis lessons from Paul (outdoor tennis courts are free in Florida, we should have something like that in the Netherlands!)

It was really a shame we had to leave after 10 days, I could have easily spent another 10 days relaxing in the sun….but coming back to the Netherlands was good too, although I’m a bit jealous of my sister because she has a much better tan than I have, and that’s even before she was going to Spain!

On Friday morning I woke up early, so I had a little run in the gym at the hotel, not great as I don’t like treadmills, but it was already much too warm outside. At around 09:00 we left the Santa Rosa hotel for the long trip to Dallas. It was quite interesting to drive there as we would encounter all these tiny Texan towns which all seemed to have at least a petrol station and a Dairy Queen (a soft serve ice cream chain) up and running and a bunch of deserted buildings and lots of big trucks. The first hour and a half or so of the trip I got to drive, but Paul was getting a bit bored with staring out of the window and playing with the radio so at the first petrol stop we swapped. I like getting petrol in the US, it’s about 25 euros to fill up a tank (45 litres).

At around 19:00, we arrived in Dallas (not bad considering the 2 hour time change). The hotel was really nice, it’s situated on a small hill just outside the city so we had a wonderful view of the skyscrapers while cooling down in the outdoor pool. Life ain’t so bad :). For dinner we went out to an area called the Bishop Arts District, were there were cute little galleries, shops and restaurants. We had dinner at Veracruz, a mesoamerican restaurant, which serves a blend of Mayan, Aztec and Mexican dishes. As the shops were still open after we had dinner we strolled around a bit more and I bought the most hilarious souvenir ever: rubber cowboy boots :).

On Saturday morning we got up early to have a splash in the pool with the wonderful view before we set out to our second long drive (to New Orleans). Actually, we both thought this drive was the worst as the landscape isn’t that interesting, it’s just fields. However, as we got a bit deeper into Louisiana, we saw swamps and drove over big bridges over the swamps. We also got some serious thunder and rain on the way, but that’s normal for this area apparently, the funny thing is that it is still warm, while it rains and afterwards. Sometime after 17:00 we arrived in New Orleans where we stayed at a wonderful hotel recommended by Paul’s parents. After dumping our stuff at the hotel we went out to get a Cajun dinner at Mulate’s, which is the American version of a biergarten, including a band playing The Chicken Dance (vogeltjesdans). But the food was decent and we had fun. After dinner we strolled through the French Quarter, which is lovely, and we ended up at the other end of it at The Blue Nile,  where the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio was playing when we entered, and after that the Soul Rebels Brass Band came on. Both were excellent and quite out of the ordinary so we had a splendid time, apart from the waiting between the bands and of course the obligatory delay in starting, so we didn’t see the end of the second band. Instead we walked back, and did a few blocks of Bourbon Street, which is a bit like Newquay on Saturday night but then 100 times worse.

On Sunday morning it was raining, but still warm so it was OK to walk through the French quarter to get to Café du Monde. This time we when we walked through Bourbon Street it was deserted, which was much nicer. At Café du Monde we had the famous beignets for breakfast. And as it had gotten sunny, I put on some sunscreen and we went to look at the river. Then we walked on to find the St. Louis Cemetery No 1., which in a way was pretty cool, but if you’ve seen old European cemeteries it’s nothing to special. The interesting thing about them is that because of the high ground water levels all burials need to be above ground, so there are all these high tombs. It also makes for a not so open space and travel guides advise against going there alone and in the dark…

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Jackson Square (we had wanted to go to Café Amelie but that was closed for the summer) for a late lunch where Paul had a sandwich while I tried the local Gumbo (a sort of fish soup). Around 4 we left New Orleans for Florida. Luckily we needed to be at the westside of Florida, so the drive wasn’t too long, as although the road trip was very very cool, we really had enough of tarmac by now :).

Tuesday was the big day: Paul’s moving out of LA. Of course we hadn’t finished the packing on Monday night so we did some more packing on Tuesday morning and around 11 we were on our way to Vegas. It was a pretty OK drive, and at around 15:00 we arrived in Sin City. It’s interesting how you can see it from miles away and the shapes of the hotels are just hilarious (rollercoasters around hotels, an Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, and our hotel, a big piramid). It’s impossible to explain what Las Vegas is like, it’s just one of those places you need to have seen to understand the utter silliness of it. It’s entertaining, absolutely, but really, one day was plenty. We strolled around the strip for a bit, and walked in and out of the hotels. The hotels are little cities in themselves, they have several restaurants, shops, theatres, exhibitions and whatnot inside them, so basically one doesn’t have to leave the hotel. At dusk and about halfway on the strip we encountered the Bellagio, just before the water show was about to start, which was very impressive. We then walked into the Bellagio, which looks (relative to the other hotels) quite classy. The only thing is that there are so many slot machines everywhere, which kind of make it all less fancy. I tried one and don’t really see the fun in it so Paul and I decided to play video games in the arcade at the Bellagio (Dance! Dance! Revolution! and Sega Racing, much more fun). On the way out the water show started again, and this time it was even more impressive as it was dark outside (but still very hot). On the way back to the Luxor we stopped at New York, New York to find some food, instead we found drinks and entertainment at the Coyote Ugly bar, Sin City at its best. After a while we got hungry, so we made it back to Luxor and found a snazzy restaurant there where we had some nice food in a quiet atmosphere away from the crazy lights and music of the slot machines. After dinner Paul wanted to lose some money at a Black Jack table so we walked through a tunnel to next hotel, Mandalay Bay as it had more proper tables (there are also Black Jack computers but that’s not real ;)). After 5 mins there, we called it a night and went to get some sleep to be rested for the second day of our road trip.

The second leg of our road trip took us to via the Hoover Dam into Arizona to the Grand Canyon. It’s a very interesting drive as the landscape changes constantly and is by far not as barren as I thought it would be. Around 16:00 we reached the Grand Canyon and enjoyed one of nature’s most stunning feats. We took load and loads of pictures, but they can not only begin to capture the vastness of the place (of many of the vistas we’ve seen along this trip actually). It’s just so incredibly huge. I was worried that it would be really really hot, but it was kind of OK, and around 17:00 it actually started to rain. So we walked back to the car and started driving to Flagstaff, where Paul’s uncle lives.

Flagstaff is a pretty sweet place, it’s about the size of Etten-Leur, and people cycle there! Paul’s uncle took us out to a nice Italian restaurant where we sat on the cozy patio. On Thursday morning we went out to breakfast to an old school American diner (mmm blueberry pancakes!) after which we hit the road again towards New Mexico. That’s where I am right now, in a hotel on Route 66, which thankfully we didn’t have to take as it’s quite narrow, but they’ve built a nice motorway next to it, which is wider and has pretty new tarmac on it. The route to Santa Rosa wasn’t that hard (just follow the I-40). We stopped at Albuquerque, which, according to my travel guide, has a lovely old town centre. We thought it was a bit of a disappointment, perhaps because there weren’t that many people, but probably mainly because it was so Disneyfied: every cliché about traditional Mexicans seemed to have been exhibited there with chilis hanging on every doorframe and silly souvenirs in every shop. But we could stretch our legs for a bit and had fun commenting on it. Anyway, tomorrow we’re onto Dallas, 474 miles (762 km) from here so I’d better get some sleep…

After counting down for weeks I finally left for LA on July 30. This time on a direct flight :). I landed at 15:00 but it took a while to get through security (we couldn’t get off the aeroplane straight away because 5 police officers picked someone off our craft first). Anyway, around 16:00 I was enjoying the Californian sun in Marina Del Rey (dropping off bags at Paul’s apartment) and Venice (walking along the beach and watching the sunset, having dinner and picking up my old bike from Laura) again. On Friday I toyed around with my new GPS unit a bit, went shopping to buy a travel guide for our upcoming road trip and relaxed by the pool a bit before going out to party. Around 23:00 the party was over for me as I hadn’t quite adjusted to the time zone, but that was OK, since we started partying at 18:00 :). Saturday was a nice quiet day. I tried to find some geocaches around Marina Del Rey, worked on my thesis a little bit (I sent off a new last draft to my supervisor the next day) and hung around the beach. I had a short swim in the ocean before going to get a haircut with Laura at Hair Venice. Bobby is seriously the coolest hairdresser ever and Laura and I had a great time and we now have great hair. Straight after the haircut I raced back towards the beach for yet another party, a fabulous Indian dinner party hosted by David. He had cooked the most amazing food and ther was great entertainment in the form of a five piece puzzle that took some while to figure out :)

Sunday morning Paul and I got up early to go surfing with one of his friends (another David) at the Venice breakwaters. I didn’t bring my wetsuit but that was OK, the water was warm enough and the waves were actually pretty good. They were getting a bit worse when the tide went out and the it started to get a bit windy, but we’d caught enough waves before that. And saw some dolphins too, so it was a great way to say goodbye to my once-homespot… As surfing makes you hungry we then headed to the Santa Monica farmer’s market for a picnic in the grass with raspberry white chocolate scones, fruit and omelettes :)

Later in the afternoon Paul had to finish off some work so I hung around a bit and tried to find a geocache close to his home again and again I couldn’t find it. I tried again after asking for a hint but it turned out that it had gone…at least it wasn’t me :). On Monday there was also lunch at Irori with some of Paul’s co-workers and goodbye cake at ISI. In the evening I cycled back to Venice to return the bike to Laura and I walked along the Venice canals for the first time. It’s funny how I never did that and it’s really pretty. At Rose I met Paul who had taken the car because he needed to pick up one of his tennis rackets that had been restrung and together we did a little tour of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. We had dinner again at Sauce, a wonderful simple organic place that just opened 2 blocks from my old home. It’s just food how it should be: good ingredients, reasonable portion sizes (that means not too big!) and strong flavours. And their cookies are just heavenly.

And then we packed…