Parijs

Saturday morning, with a bit of messing about with track works on the Dutch train system, we hopped on a train to Paris.  From Rotterdam to Paris in 2.5 hours, with no mucking about at airports or dealing with immigration. To quote Tony, sweet.

Amsterdam

Ok, so we're very late with this post. So, please enjoy some time travel to a few weeks ago...

We were delighted to be able to catch up with two friends from our Boulder grad school days. Zulah and Carlos were in The Netherlands for a week or so. We spent one day with them the seeing the sights of Amsterdam. Like this:

Globetrotting through museums

Yesterday I went to a museum in Haarlem.  I really need to blog over our great day-trip to Amsterdam and our week in Tallinn, Estonia but yesterday's trip is fresh in my mind.

Biking

As the weather has improved, we have taken the opportunity to go for some short bike rides around Eindhoven. Last weekend we visited this forest area to the west of the city.

Carnaval

A few weeks ago, it was Carnaval.  This is quite a big deal in the south of The Netherlands.  For people who grew up here, I know I'm probably being insulting but it appears to be that people wear funny clothes, watch a parade and drink lots of alcohol.  We went to the parade, just to see what all the fuss was about.  As an aside, people thought my giraffe coat was part of dressing up for Carnaval.

My trip to the mouth of hell

Today I had an outing to Helmond.  Yesterday I saw a pamphlet for an exhibition in Helmond and it looked interesting.  Since it is only 10 minutes on the train, I thought I'd have a little excursion.

Everything started perfectly. I got to the train platform about 2 minutes before my train was due to leave and the train was sitting there waiting for me.  The train went smoothly through to Helmond but after that everything went awry.  Here follows a bit of a rant.

Well, it was not the week that people hoped it would be.  The excitement continued to build until Wednesday when the people responsible were meeting again. (The rayonhoofden - rayon heads, I like to think but they're just the people in charge of the different areas where the race goes.)  Due to the weather forecast of the thaw starting on Monday, it was decided that there would be no Elfstedentocht at this time.

There were quite a few disappointed people but a lot of people, especially all those who had booked hotels in the area for the weekend, thinking that the race would go ahead, did an unofficial elfstedentocht. Most of the country was out skating on the weekend since it was probably the last chance for this season.

Everyone will get over it and start thinking about next year but it's hard to imagine better conditions than that.  If the ice can't freeze enough after two solid weeks of below -10C overnight, maybe the conditions have changed too much - denser population, more bridges, more traffic etc. Maybe the days of the eldstedentocht are gone?