Day 3: Rotterdam

So A and I had been planning to head out of U's apartment around 8:45 in order to spend in the day in the Hague, but we were all up way too late chatting (as always!), and then I had problems sleeping (yes, pathetic to admit I'm having insominia while on vacation! Too many things to figure out/plan/research ...), so we didn't end up even getting up until 10 or so. We decided to put off the Hague, and instead hit up Rotterdam, which I'd heard didn't really warrant a huge amount of time to see.

After eating and getting ready here, we hopped the bus to the Utrecht train station, and then were off. By the time we got off the train in Rotterdam, it was about 1 p.m. Happily, there was a little tourist office a couple blocks from the station, so we stopped in to pick up some maps and guidebooks. We intended to go on a couple recommended walking tours, but the streets there are pretty confusing (not to mention the fact that some don't appear on the maps at all!), so we took a fair amount of detours. But we did see the cube houses (that's what the shot above/right is of), an outdoor art park, and got in some light shopping. A was hoping to finally venture into a "coffee shop" (ahem), but we weren't able to find this one recommended by the guidebook, so I guess she'll try again in Amsterdam.

Here's a shot of a library (or "bibliotheek") in Rotterdam:

And a pic of a cool boat we saw off the old harbor (Rotterdam is an interesting mix of the old and new, and there's construction going on all around town):

We had a drink and some curly fries (seasoned, with nacho-cheese sauce on top) and then hopped the train back to Utrecht around 5:30 p.m.

On the train ride back -- which takes about 30 minutes -- we made the unfortunate mistake of sitting in the "silent car," which was indeed...silent. The lack of sleep and activities of the day caught up with me, but since A was already zonked out for the ride, I had to make sure to not nod off myself, or we definitely would've missed our stop.

Other random info:

-- A and I both tried our Visa cards today -- and they worked! So we're fully functional now with both our debit ande credit cards.

-- The Dutch are taking some getting used to.. they're a bit in their own worlds, kind of like a stereotypical New Yorker. When A and I were lugging our various bags onto the train from the airport, no one offered to help us. And people seem kind of annoyed when we ask them touristy questions ("Is this were we catch the train to Utrecht?"). I guess we've been spoiled by all the nice folk in Seattle. I'm not saying, of course, that all the Dutch are like that. We've had a few good encounters with service people and one random lady on the street who asked if we needed help finding something.

-- As most everyone knows, the Netherlands is big on biking, and that's how a lot of people get around town. All streets have devoted bike lanes. But it's so weird to see people just riding around in normal clothes -- no bike shorts (or, as my friend Julia would say, "Lance Armstrong gear"), helmet, flashing lights, much less "on your left/right" as they pass other bikers. We're quickly getting used to looking both directions for cars *and* bicyclists before crossing streets -- those bicyclists seem to rule the road!

-- We've lucked out with the weather so far. It's been dry, windy, and cool (though not really cold until after the sun sets), with even some blue skies and sunshine now and again.

-- Apparently my cousin always falls asleep on the couch at night, so she's nicely given up her bedroom (and double bed) to A and me. We'd packed sleeping bags just in case, but it's of course much more comfortable to sleep on an actual bed. The sleeping bags may still come in handy later during our trip, when we stay in hostels.

OK, off to bed now. Hoping to finally get into Amsterdam tomorrow!

Day 2: Mostly mellow, with some nearby "sightseeing"

Nothing too exciting to report as our first full day in the Netherlands comes to a close.. A and I rolled out of bed around 8:30, and slowly began getting ready. We ate some lunch here, and then headed out on foot to take in the local sights (though we'd been warned by U that Utrecht is a pretty residential area). Our fancy "let's-try-not-to-get-lost" method was to write down our path as we went (i.e., "L on Blahblah ... R on Blahblahblah"). After maybe half a mile, we stumbled onto a little shopping area. We spied an ATM, and with bated breath, tried to withdraw money. And we were successful!! So I don't know what the folks on the Chase help line were smoking last night when they kept telling us that we were using the wrong PINs or what have you -- we used the same PINs we tried with the machines at the train station, and everything went through without a hitch. So that huge weight is at least lifted off my shoulders now, though I have yet to try a transaction using my Visa card (which also failed at the train station yesterday). However -- turns out that apparently the card machines used to purchase train tickets require some special chip on one's card, and U, after looking at our various cards, immediately said "You guys don't have the chip." So hopefully our cards will work everywhere else, and we'll just always have to use cash to buy train tickets.

After the momentary high of the ATM success, A and I wandered a bit more around the shops, and went into a grocery store to stock up on some food (U's cupboards/fridge are a little bare!). I have this newfound fascination with seeing what flavors of chips -- mainly Lays -- are carried in different countries, after discovering all the exotic flavors you can buy in Canda (the most popular there being ketchup, but they also have curry and I think even dill pickle). And wow, my eyes were bugging out at this particular store -- they had probably about five varieties of Lays potato chips, along with five of Lay's high-end line (the name escapes me now). So I bought a variety pack with little bags of cheese and onion, paprika, bolognese and barbecue ham chips, plus one of the high-end line in Thai sweet chili. I had a pack of the cheese and onion earlier; it was good, similar to the U.S.'s sour cream and onion. A liked the Thai sweet chili better than I did; I wasn't too keen on the spices in it. Anyway, once I sample several flavors, I'll have to go back and get full-sized bags of a couple of my favorites, so my friends at work can sample them as well. Oh, haha, and I laughed so hard when we saw that Cool Ranch Doritos here are instead labeled "Cool American Doritos"!

Here are the varieties of Lays I have to sample:

Once we got back, we just watched MTV and read and ate until U got home from work around 6:30. She's wrapping up a big project, so she did some working from home, and then we ate a great late dinner around 10 (paneer with peas and roti).

We also spent some time tonight trying to figure out how we'll spend the rest of our days here. A and I are thinking to take one big side trip from the Netherlands, which may be to Prague, as plane tickets are somewhat cheap. The main speedbump there is finding a place to stay that's convenient, relatively cheap, highly rated/reviewed, etc. Stressful! Anyway, beyond that possible trip, we'll likely stick to day trips. I.e., tomorrow, we're planning to head to the Hague. Wednesday, the weather's supposed to be clearer, so we may head to Amsterdam then (and possibly for a second day later in the week).

OK, going to keep this short, as we're hoping to get out of here by 8:30 or so tomorrow morning.. more later..

We've arrived!

So we have arrived in Amsterdam..

To back track a bit: The past week was non-stop for me, with the combined stresses of packing, cleaning (in anticipation of my friend staying at my condo to watch Buster) and prepping stuff at work (as I'd never really taken much time off before). I of course left so many things until the last minute, though as my dad reminded me, even if I had the extra week I was whining for on Friday, I still would've been running around just as much! Thankfully, though, our flight out of Sea-Tac wasn't until 3:30 p.m. Saturday, so we didn't have to do the frantic early-morning scramble like on many international trips. That said, I got to my parents' 45 minutes late, but we'd built in a buffer in anticipation of this, so we still made it to Sea-Tac about two hours before our flight.

The Seattle-Reykjavik leg of our trip, which took seven hours, was thankfully on a barely half-full 757, so Anuja and I had a three-seat row to ourselves. I made some headway in the new Ed Viesturs book ("K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain"), and tried unsuccessfully to get some shut eye. For dinner, A and I split a turkey/spinach roll thing we'd bought in the airport (Icelandair charges for all food).

We had barely an hour in Keflavik airport in Reykjavik, and then we hopped our next plane to Amsterdam. The flight time was about three hours, and this time the plane was nearly full. There were a lot of student-age travelers, surprise...

Once we got to Schiphol in Amsterdam, we had some stress when we tried to buy train tickets and couldn't get any of our bank cards to work (and yes, we'd let the bank/credit companies know beforehand that we'd be using our cards overseas). Thankfully, Dad had sent A and me off with some cash, so we exchanged it for Euros and used cash to buy our tickets to Utrecht, which is where our cousin U lives. The next stress came when trying to call U to let her know when we'd be rolling in to Utrecht. She'd given us her number, but though I dialed it twice (and wasted several cents, not knowing that those phone machines don't give you change!!), I kept getting sent to some modem-sounding device (the phone would ring twice, and then I'd hear a loud, long beep). I asked a lady at an Information booth, and it turned out U's number was a mobile number, which needed a zero in front of it. Who knew! Then we wasted more money, as we didn't have the 20 cents in exact change (and would've had to go downstairs to get change) and the first time I got connected to U, our line was disconnected before I could give her all our info. Lovely..

Anyway, we finally lugged our bags onto the train and sat through the 35-minute ride to Utrecht. U met us at the train station, and we cabbed to her apartment. Crashed for a couple hours, and then spent the evening eating, watching some Dutch TV ("Australian Border Patrol" -- love it!) and starting to plan what we'll do (and where) while we're in town. Unfortunately, U's WiFi is down, and the netbook I borrowed from my boss doesn't have an ethernet port, so my Internet access will be limited during the day. But I may cart the netbook around with me while we're out and about, in case we step into a cafe/whatever with WiFi. Was hoping to upload some pics from today as well, but the USB ports on U's computer don't work correctly, so that's a fail as well.

It's been a rather frustrating day, obviously, but at least we made it here. Now I'm going to head offline to see if I can get someone on the phone to sort out our credit/debit-card situation. Here's hoping for a smoother road for the rest of our stay!

Tickets: booked!

So it's been a busy/stressful few weeks, but I'm happy to report that I have tickets in hand for my fall trip! I'm going out of the country (and taking more than a handful of days off) for the first time in over seven years! As I mentioned two posts ago, my sister and I had gone from thinking to go to India to thinking to go to Japan. Then we got a reality check when we found out that one woman we were thinking to stay with is now living back at home (she's in her early 20s), doesn't have the room to put us up, and is 45 minutes by train from Tokyo. Not really ideal!

Our planning/research languished for a couple weeks, but then my cousin in Cali, D, called me up to chat. I mentioned our latest trip-planning speedbump, and she said "You know Uma [D's sister] is working in Amsterdam right now, right? Why don't you go visit her?" Genius! I sent mail to Uma, got the greenlight from her to visit (and stay in her apartment), and then I had to try scaling the next speedbump -- buying the tickets. It took a week or so, and lots of consulting with various friends who travel a lot more than I do. But we finally have our tickets! We'll be heading to Amsterdam in mid-November (not really ideal, weather-wise, but cheaper, tickets-wise) and staying there for nearly two weeks. On the way back home, we'll stay in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a couple days. We may take the train from Amsterdam to elsewhere in Europe -- Belgium, Germany and even France are relatively close by -- but we haven't figured out those details yet.

I haven't been able to get fully excited for the trip just yet, as I have A TON of preparations to do before I can even start thinking about what to pack! Namely, I have to write up a bunch of how-to documents for my team on what I do for work, as none of them are really familiar with any of my tasks. On top of that, I have to do a pretty in-depth cleaning and decluttering of my condo, as a friend of mine from work will be staying at my place while I'm out to take care of Buster. But the biggest hurdle, buying the tickets, has at least been conquered!

The fleecing of ... me

I hit up yet another REI sale last night (one of their best ones, as they have a bunch of stuff on sale, plus any clearance items with a price ending in $0.83 are an additional 50% off!) and one of the items I picked up was...yet another fleece. You see, I have a huge love affair with fleece. It's so cozy and warm, and on top of that, the wicking properties make it great for outdoor activities. Plus, fleeces come in many "strengths" and varieties (lightweight hoodies, thick jackets, wind-blocking jackets), so they're extremely versatile.

Anyway, my latest pickup was a lightweight, light grey REI-brand zip-up hoodie. And this morning, it got me to wondering just how many fleece jackets I own. I'm in the office today, so I can't go to my closet to verify, but for sure, I know I have at least 13 fleece jackets. Yes, 13 -- I made a list! All but one of them are either by REI, The North Face or Helly Hansen. The colors range across the rainbow, though interestingly, I skipped orange and green. Good thing I hadn't noted that *before* I went to REI last night! I don't wear a lot of orange in general, but I do like green, so that may have to be the next fleece I pick up...some day.

(Trip) planning is never easy

So this spring, my sister suddenly mentioned that she wanted to take a trip to India in mid-October to be there for Diwali (India's Christmas). I haven't been to India since '97 -- and nearly all our extended family is still over there -- so I thought about joining her for a couple weeks (she was planning to stay for a month, as she would just be finishing up with her summer job by then). But, cut to a couple weeks ago.. and it turns out most of the relatives we'd want to see and/or stay with will be out of the country or super busy (i.e., my mom's best friend is planning her daughter's wedding). So, rather than go and then upset our out-of-country relatives, we've put the trip on hold indefinitely.

Now that we have the travel bug in our head, we're trying to find someplace else to go right around that same time of mid/late October. Japan came to mind immediately, just because we know some people over there, and can speak/understand the language brokenly. While we try and get in touch with those friends, I'm still exploring other options. I haven't traveled internationally in nearly seven (!) years now, so I want to go somewhere really cool, and kind of off the beaten path. I've already been to the top destination of London, and due to their popularity, am hoping to avoid other top locales like Paris, Rome, etc. I still would like to go to those places, of course, but for now, I'm trying to come up with someplace a little more exotic. I even thought about somewhere in S. Africa for a bit, but the price of flying there is nearly as much as to go to India ($1,200-1,400). I also thought of Egypt, but then I looked at some pics a friend of mine took when she was there in October of last year, and noticed that on one day, it hit 128 degrees. Much as I'm dying to see the pyramids, I don't think I could handle 128 degrees!!

So.. the investigation continues. Some other options are Turkey, Hungary, Peru, the Czech Republic.. and of course, Japan, which might end up being the most realistic just because then we wouldn't have to deal with the largest planning stress of finding a place to stay. Of course, who knows, we may end up going nowhere at all!! I've at least started the process of getting my passport renewed. Hopefully my sis and I will do some more in-depth research over the next week or two and start narrowing things down. Worst comes to worst, well, there's always Canada!

Hot lady in the city

So summer is in full swing here in Seattle. Life has been quite exhausting lately as I've been unusually busy (plans nearly every night) and it's been hot, hot, HOT! Seattle is all about mild weather, but we've had several days in a row of 90+ temps, with a couple days even going over 100 and setting all kinds of records (see my phone's weather forecast from last Wed.). My condo's windows all face north, so I don't get a ton of direct sunlight, but after a couple days of consistent and constant sun, it starts heating up. My poor kitty was pretty miserable during the height of the heat last week.. I kept the windows closed and the blinds drawn, and had a fan blasting in my bedroom (where he always seems to prefer to hang out), but he was pretty lethargic. Luckily, he ate/drank as usual, and made it through the heat OK. The weekend had temps only in the upper 80s, and I think we'll be cooling down from there the next few days, even maybe getting some rain towards the end of the week. If we stick to the 70s for the rest of the summer, that'll really be OK!!

Due to the heat, I've been trying to stay indoors as much as possible, but I did get out two weekends ago to join some friends for a rafting trip on the Wenatchee in eastern Washington. My friend Nicole was going to take her two boys (who are nearly two) on their first rafting trip. I decided to go the "cover-up" route with my clothing in light of the sun and heat and my preference to avoid tanning, so I looked a bit Michael Jackson-esque (only the backs of my hands and bits of the tops of my feet were really in direct sunlight), but it was a really fun three-hour/10-mile outing. Everyone on my boat -- except Nicole and the boys, thankfully -- got ejected at some point, even though we'd been told the trip would be "easy." Luckily, just before I got popped out, I saw the rapid (which had a big rock right under the surface of the water) and grabbed onto the rope. I was popped out onto the rock, but held on to the rope, and since the raft simultaneously got stuck on said rock, I was quickly able to stand up on the rock and step back into the raft. My "spill" was definitely the mildest of our raft's ejections! But thankfully, no one was too seriously hurt or traumatized by their respective falls. The nice thing about going rafting with Nicole is that she and her husband have good friends who own all the rafting gear we need -- rafts, paddles, life jackets. So we don't have to bother with making reservations with a commercial outfit and/or shelling out a lot of money. Nicole's husband, plus the guy who owns the gear, are both river-rafting guides, so we're in good hands whenever we get onto the water. This outing, for the first time, I took my digital camera with me. I had it in this cheap ($7?) but useful clear waterproof bag thing, so I was able to hang it around my neck and safely take pictures at well. The only hitches were that I had to periodically wipe the bag to remove water droplets that splashed onto it, and I had to sort of distort the bag before I turned the camera on, so the lens wouldn't hit the side of it when it extended (thus freaking the camera out and causing it to turn back off). Some of the pictures were distorted due to the bag, but because the camera was digital, I was able to take so many pictures that most of them were postable. Here's a shot of me, Nicole, and her boy T after the ride: