A Month Later

Posted on by ghotiindustries

It’s taken us a whole month, but we finally made it to not one Museum, but two! In the one day!

However, given that these were the Sex Museum and the Torture Museum …

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And I don’t really want to lose my G rating …

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There won’t be any photos of those.

Both museums were good, though I think you get more for your money out of the Sex Museum. Both were stark reminders that humans have been humans for thousands of years. In the case of the Sex museum that wasn’t a bad thing. In the case of the Torture museum it was just depressing. It was a good thing the Torture museum was so much smaller really … though three times the price!

The weather has finally been warming up and we have been increasing our wanderings accordingly. Front door steps and buildings are breaking out in wisteria and blossoms.

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Any sign of sun and the locals take to the canals.

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And all the trees are gearing up for Summer with stunning canopies of fresh bright new green leaves.

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To celebrate our first month we headed out to dinner to one of the many steak houses in the area.

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Good food in abundance really is a wonder of the modern world!

Have a wonderful week!

I found it!

Posted on by ghotiindustries

In a quaint little deli on a busy street,

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I found vegemite!

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I’d been missing it you see. Just a convenient spread that isn’t chocolate or jam to smear on a sandwich.

But for this price …

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I can wait for someone I love to send me a care package 😉

Amsterdam City Map

Posted on by ghotiindustries

It was on our first day here while we were wandering around town, that the map I had carefully placed in my pocket, wasn’t there later when I went looking for it. Being me I had a couple of back ups, but that map was a particularly good one, and I had been studying it for a few months before we flew over, so I was attached to it. It was laminated, folded to a convenient size, had 3 different scales, and all the city streets listed. (handy!)

But it was time to acquire a new one. The paper one I’d ripped out of my Lonely Planet was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. There was another type of map which I had been looking at when I bought the laminated one, it looked remarkably cool hip and funky, so would therefore be neat to try out. It was the Crumpled City map.

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It is designed to be crumpled and shoved … wherever it fits really.

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My biggest problem with it was with the first instruction on the back of the box. Crumple before use.

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It spent a fair amount of time in my bag still folded. Crumpling a map really goes against the grain!

The problem with this is that it is a really LARGE map! So I had to crumple it to make it easier to wield.

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Turns out crumpling a map can be very therapeutic!

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Now it not only fits in its little bag, but it goes with Himself everywhere.

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Being that it is still a HUGE map though, I ordered myself another small laminated one for my hand bag! Having said that though, we are needing them less and less for finding our way around! Go us! Amsterdam just happens to be significantly smaller than Sydney! 😉

Tiptoeing through the Tulips!

Posted on by ghotiindustries

For our second big tourist attraction (the first was a canal boat tour) we decided to go all out and go somewhere with a high cliché factor. We went to a tulip festival at De Keukenhof.

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Now, I know we could have saved ourselves some money and gone to Floriade in Canberra, but you know, doing it this way we got to catch up with a friend we haven’t seen in a year! (G – next time we’ll be on time! I swear!) G won himself many brownie points by complimenting my new scarf too!

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There were tulips …

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Swans doing what swans do …

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Swans wondering what we do …

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Tulips …

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Art tormenting swans …

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Tulips …

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Bells that chimed “Oh Suzannah” …

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Tulips …

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A windmill … (I still need to see a working one)

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And tulips!

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It was an amazing day and a LOT of fun. Next year we may have to go a touch earlier in the season though, as some of the tulips were a little bit past their bloom life, but that just made the photography an interesting challenge!

Until next time, tot ziens!

Local Groups

Posted on by ghotiindustries

In the interests of getting to know people Himself and I headed to the local knit night. Himself isn’t a knitter, but it was handy having him there to walk with when I walked down the wrong canal at first and got lost. This wasn’t all bad though, as I put it to you that what we found was a new breed of pukeko! A blue chicken that isn’t blue!

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Every time I walk outside I am struck again by how beautiful this city and it’s canals are.

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And how old it is too.

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Going to knit night though afforded us a new view of them, all lit up at night.

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They just get more beautiful.

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For now though, let’s leave the canals, and I’ll show you the projects I’ve finished since I got here!

First was this pair of socks for Himself which I began a year ago. (Yes, a year ago. No, I’m not sure where my mojo went) I loved this yarn from Dragonfly Fibres. The colourway was like working old spun metal as it cascaded from gray through green and into subtle burnished colours.

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And my travel knitting project, the one I thought I’d never finish, and was afraid I’d hate a foot into it, as posted here … Behold the wonderous rainbow scarf!!!

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I love it so much! Now I just need a hat to go with it!!! *grins*

Knit night was a wonderful group of people. All very friendly and welcoming! I’ll be going again next week. For the future though I’ll need to take something a little less brain intensive, as holding a conversation with people you don’t know, and following a lace chart, just doesn’t happen!