Beginning our Cruise

We joined our ship the MS Sound of Music (and yes it does have photos of Julie et al on the wall) late Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a Captain's cocktail hour before a Welcome dinner. The Captain gave us the emergency briefing - he is hungarian with very poor English and no one must understood much. We had dinner with a couple who of course know a librarian we both know - the world is a very small place. Dinner was rather slow taking 3 hours to have six sumptuous courses. Then we lost another hour to daylight savings so ended up going to bed at 11.15pm.

Van Gogh Museum

I was extremely tired by the time I fronted up to the Van Gogh Museum at 6.00pm on Friday night. The Museum is open until 10.00pm on Fridays and it sure was jumping. There is a special Picasso exhibition on at the moment - he is not one of my favourites, I have to confess, so I skipped him. There are four floors of Van Gogh paintings and drawings as well as paintings by his contemporaries and influences. He painted an amazing 800 paintings, over 100 drawings and sketches in a short painting life - he was just 35 when he suicided. The story of his life and work is tragic as the story of genius so often is. My favourite paintings were of course the daisies and a collection of spring blossom paintings which were just beautiful. We had fun in the fabulous museum shop afterwards.
Tomorrow we join the cruise in the afternoon. We were planning a Delft DOK visit but I am so tired and leg weary that I am going to stay in the city and visit the Riksmuseum where the art of the Dutch masters presides and have an easy day.

Anne Frank House

I visited the Anne Frank House later in the afternoon. I was so glad I prepurchased my ticket as the queue was around the corner with a wait of 1-2 hours. I was able to go straight in at my appointed time. The house is situated on a canal and from the front you could never tell that there is a two story annexe at the back of the building. The steps in Dutch buildings are vertically challenging - I could put my hands on a step six up from where my feet were! Oto frank's business was run from the front of the house and then a bookcase hid the secret steps into the annexe where 8 people including the four Franks hid from the Nazis for over 2 years. Several of Otto's workers assisted with food, etc. Anne's room which she shared with a gentleman is extremely small - the pictures of the Dutch and British Royal Family and her cinema stars are where she pasted them onto the wall. The story of the hiding and their capture and what happened to the family was very sobering but not in the end depressing. There was a sense of celebrating a young life that was snuffed out too soon but who lives on through her diary. Visiting the Anne Frank House is an Amsterdam must do.

Keukenhof Tulip Gardens

After a slight comedy of errors, we finally made it to Keukenhof, the home of Netherland's tulips. It is only the second day the tulip gardens have been open this season and we were a bit worried that not too many flowers would be out. However, spring has been kind to us - saw heaps of beautiful tulips, crocuses, daffodils, a magnificent display of orchids and lots lots more. We had a wonderful walk around the park which has some stunning public art, beautiful lakes and canals all designed around displaying the flowers to their best effect. We did our first lot of souvenir shopping with Delft stuff top of my list. While the weather was slightly cooler than yesterday, we had a reasonably sunny day and good walking weather.

Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam at 6.30 this morning and had a bit of fun at the airport and on the hotel bus with a 21 year old Aussie guy who has come over to party for 2 weeks for his 21st birthday.
We could not get into our hotel room until 1.00pm so we walked down towards the centre of town. We ended up walking to the Central Station (about 2kms from our hotel) to find the i and get some info on the public transport.
It is a beautiful sunny day - coolish - but so lovely we decided to do a tour out to the Keukenhopf tulip farm this afternoon.
We are currently having a look through the Amsterdam Central Library which is 8 floors. We had morning tea in the 7th story cafe overlooking Amsterdam - just superb.
The Library is enormous - 600 public internet pcs for a start - and just stunning.

A Long Flight

We enjoyed a lovely cup of tea with my travelling companion and her boss at Tullamarine. Had a good flight to KL - five seats to myself so was ble to lie down. The next (long) leg was 12.5 hours and was reasonably full. Had spare seats next to me which a Dutch person chose to lie on for the entire flight leaving me squished and getting kicked by him. I have him a few belts on the feet in return as he kicked me every time I fell asleep. Needless to say, I did not sleep too well but probably managed about 5 hours all up.

Sachin shows Ricky what sportsmanship is all about

I was watching the Windies vs India game last night while writing a letter to my Welsh relatives and notes to myself on stuff to pack or not forget to do. And what happens - Sachin nicks through to the keeper and WALKS, despite the umpire shaking his head. Do you think Ricky might have got an idea of what good sportsmanship is? Boy, did it show up our captain's actions.

Missing the World Cup

Many of you will know that I am a bit of a cricket fan - well alright, a bit of cricket fanatic really. I am of course going to miss the critical part of the World Cup knock out phase and the finals. This hurts somewhat but you all need to get with me and barrack for England so that they stay in the hunt and I get WC news on the BBC in Europe. Incidentally, I am not exactly holding out great hopes for the Aussies - they are not traveling the best and the captain needs to take a good hard look at himself to quote the Coodabeens. The SAfas, Pakis and Windies look dangerous. It will be fascinating to see how the Windies go against India. I have a suspicion India will let the home pressure situation get to them - also I don't like Dhoni so I refuse to tip them. However, Sachin is showing us that age does not weary all people - he is remarkable.

Preparing for Europe

"He who would travel happily must travel lightly"
I am trying to obey Antoine de Saint-Exupery's words and travel light. I am nearly all packed and almost organised and ready to go. Just those last minute camera disks, etc to finalise. I am bit worried about the Libyan situation and hope it doesn't impact upon our flight or in Europe. A certain person at work (you know who you are!) said to me three weeks ago "The Libyan thing might affect you" and I was like "No way - we're miles from it" but now it is looking all too close watching the missiles this morning.
And how weird is it with Japan and the nuclear emergency - the first time I went to Europe in 1986 I got Chernobyled. First you couldn't eat salad then veggies began going off the menu then lamb then fish then all sorts of meat. I am hoping this won't happen this time - being gluten and dairy free already - my choices are already diminshed. It is to be hoped that things in Japan come under control soon.