Home Sweet Amsterdam

We made it. Gene is hard at work, I've been exploring the city ... which is a combo of Portland and San Francisco ... except a tad bit older, people speak Dutch, and they can kill you with their bikes. While playing tourist, I've checked out the Anne Frank & Van Gogh Museums, outdoor markets and several parks. We're sort of taking Dutch lessons, but I begin a Spanish conversation class next week - yes, the logic there is a bit off. The Weiden+Kennedy family has been beyond friendly so that's a big plus. We even had our friends, Jessie & Kendra (fellow Portlanders living here) over to our fancy temporary house ... better show it off while we have it. (The above picture is our current street.) The move to our 'real' place is in mid-March.

So far, we've explored Belgium (see Antwerp post) but more recently we zipped off on our bikes (oh yes, we're like locals now) for what I thought was a 30 minute 'jaunt' to a traditional Dutch village called Zaanse Schans. Two hours later, we arrived. (I still swear the tourist office told me 30 minutes ... we took the train home.) Click here for pics of Amsterdam and this little village, which included us watching a Dutch man a turn a small tree stump into a pair of clogs (thus the wooden shoe picture that Gene couldn't resist.)

Antwerp, Belgium

... And we're officially off and touring Europe. For our first weekend together, we took the train 2 hours away to the 2nd largest city in Belgium, Antwerp. (Or as the locals call it, Antwerpen.) Cool city - we basically ate Belgium chocolate, Belgium waffles, drank Belgium beer and roamed around the cobblestone streets. Antwerp is apparently the fashion capital of Europe and also famous for diamonds (although Gene conveniently took me for a tour of area on Sunday, when everything is closed). Smart man.