School's in!

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Clayton was in town, the girls started school, Lilli turned 11, started soccer and had a multi-day field trip, Holli visited Moscow, and I got to drive for 2 hrs/day or more!

Copenhagen must have really tuckered poor CC out - he spent much of his time here in the horizontal position. 

While Clayton was sawing logs, we got out of the house for a little while and rode over to Vondelpark.
The girls have really gotten good at climbing trees!

Same tree, different angle!
This is but one example of the seemingly endless number of trees that have fallen over but continued to thrive for years.

Clayton and Daisy spent a lot of quality time together during his visit. I would have thought that he was used to kittens following him around all the time, but apparently not.

Daisy was particularly interested in CC's exercise routine. She must have been worried that he was going to hurt himself because she kept pouncing on his head in an effort to stop his histrionics. I really enjoyed watching the show. 

By the time we were ready to go see the Amsterdam nightlife (first time for me), the two of them had become very close!

 The first day of school was - as is often the case - also Lilli's 11th birthday. They stopped for a quick "first-day photoshoot" at the bridge closest to our apartment:

Something that we didn't know until a few days before school started was that for the first 5 days of school, Eliza would be getting out early - at noon. At home in Louisville, this would not be a big deal - school is a 5 minute drive from the house. Here, it takes between 10 and 20 minutes just to get to the highway and another 10-15 to get to school, which translates to me being in the car for 2 hours on a normal day, and 3 hours when I have to make an extra trip to get Eliza! 

Since Clayton was likely to spend the day sleeping (again) if I didn't roust him, and I didn't want to have to make the extra car trip to Amstelveen, we decided to bike down to collect her - he on my mountain bike and I on my city bike with the trailer - about 16 km/ 10 miles. I did NOT have my bike legs yet, and we left a little late and had to make up time. Pulling the trailer on the city bike while trying to maintain a decent speed was too much so CC and I had to switch up about half-way there! We made it about 5 minutes later than we should have (not the best impression to make on Eliza's teachers), but everything worked out ok...

Eliza had a great first day. She won a rose "for being the best behaved" - Ha!

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the Amstel river - Eliza has developed quite a liking for cheeseburgers!

Eliza didn't make it home before crashing in the trailer. This has become the norm even in the car!

We decided to rent a boat and cruise the town to celebrate Lilli's birthday after school. Many of the boats that we see around here are electric; this was the case with our rental as well. It was my first time driving one like this - very quiet, but not much power (kind of like a Prius?). I managed to overload the motor within the first 10 minutes when I went full throttle in reverse to move to the side for a tour-boat. We were dead in the water for a minute until we figured out that we needed to cycle power to clear the overload. Evidently the boats are more PC than Mac.

Eliza suckered CC into sitting in his lap for much of the ride. 

Lilli stealing a piece of "cake" while Lucy is hamming for the camera.  

Lilli again showing her age 

This swan wanted to join the party

Lilli showing off her gift from Lucy - a quill that she was dying to have!  

Family shot with the Waag in the background. It's worth reading about.

Lilli holding up her planner, a gift from Nanna.
This particular "inspirational" bit, for some reason, reminded me of Gina.

We made another Sunday evening trip to the beach for dinner, and found a restaurant near Zandvoort owned by Bjorn Borg.

The food was as good as the atmosphere - we will be back!

The kids had a great time, as they do every time we hit the sand. 

Notice the stylistic differences - Lucy in a bathing suit, Holli in a winter coat.

Last Sunday we attended a birthday party for the Sneen girls (their dad, Alex, works with Holli for Finlandia). The party was on the pannenkoekenboot (pancake boat). Getting there was somewhat of an adventure - our first real bicycle trip through town with all five of us (Eliza was in the trailer of course). We biked up the Prinsengracht all the way to the IJ (the body of water to the north of "downtown") and followed the waterfront over to Central Station where we boarded a ferry. The ferry, which is "free" - at least to those who don't pay taxes - took us bikes and all across the IJ (~2 minutes). On the other side, we had another 10-15 minutes of biking to get to the party. It was worth it - all you can eat Dutch pancakes (and coffee, beer, etc.)!

The toppings bar

Spek (bacon) pancakes were the most popular option for the adults. The bacon is cooked into the pancakes! Other options for starting points were plain and apple.

There is a Zulu-class soviet submarine parked next to the pancake boat.
It's in pretty bad shape now, but I can imagine that it was pretty impressive 50 years ago!

After eating her fill and playing in the ball pit, Eliza was worn out and - again - didn't make it home.

Lilli had football (soccer) tryouts the first Monday of school, and also received an invitation from our neighbor to come to their "hockey training" (field hockey practice). The timing worked out so that she could do both, but she was pretty worn out by the time we headed home - especially after not getting all that much serious exercise over the summer. While she was practicing hockey (the coach spoke Dutch by the way, which was quite frustrating for Lilli), Eliza and Lucy picked up some sticks and played a little. Eliza did much better than I would have expected given that she had never hit a ball before!

This pass - like many of hers - went right to Lucy!
Just don't stand near her when she's swinging!

During that first 5 days of school, Eliza and I had to find something to do for a couple of hours every day while her sisters were still in school. The Amsterdam Bos (mentioned in a previous post) is very close to school, so we went there one day for a walk and saw some interesting things!

One of the many beautiful lakes in the area

Eliza discovered a dragonfly in the water that appeared dead. She touched it and it moved, so we had to rescue it!
We carried it with us on our walk while its wings dried and then set it free - she was very happy to have saved it!

Translation: Naturist Meadow. Forbidden for dogs from Apr. 1 to Oct. 1.
What could be terribly interesting about this?
Naturist can be roughly interpreted as nudist, as we discovered - fortunately from afar - when we walked into the meadow.
Also note that the triple X is the symbol of Amsterdam; nothing to do with "adult content"

The four of us had to kill some time after school and before the first of three "back-to-school nights" a few days later.

The color-coordinated girls before we went into the Nemo last night for a Brown-Forman get-together.
The Nemo is the Amsterdam Science Center; we visited in April during our visit. Very cool!

Bonus picture of Eliza sleeping - they pull the barstools together and lay down on them periodically. This picture was taken while I'm writing this!

Lilli's grade-level trip
Starting in upper school (6th through 12th at ISA), the entire class takes a 3-day field trip during the first full week of school as a team building exercise. The 6th grade went to Apeldoorn, which is about 90 km (55 miles) east of Amsterdam. There they explored the national park, did some "ropes" climbing, and visited the Apenheul monkey reserve. Lilli had a ball!

Other stuff:

Our new painting and the view that inspired it (from the bridge over the Prinsengracht just north of us.)

This post's entry for "favorite boat"

College football is finally here!

My view - I was able to watch two games at once, but it was 11:00 pm at halftime of the 3:30 games.
At least the house is quiet during the games!

Some things I've seen while biking

You can't believe how big these rabbits are!

My new favorite ride is to the beach at Zandvoort. It's about 27 km (17 mi), which takes about an hour with traffic.

I decided to ride home from the beach one day through the forest via IJmuiden. Had no idea there would be wild horses!

This race track, which I discovered on google maps, is just behind the dunes from the beach in Zandvoort.
I will be figuring out a way to drive on it... They have several exotic cars available for track time!

Geeked-out Alfa at the track entrance

Just outside the track entrance, BMW was holding an event for their dealers to drive various cars around an autocross-style course in a parking lot.

This is a typical fill-up for the Q7. I seem to recall wanting something with a lot of power, just can't remember why...

For those who do math (one of my favorite quotes from Rohm and Haas):
Gas is €1.859/l, which equates to $9.11/gal
The Q7 apparently holds nearly 100 liters (25 gals), so this fill-up cost €179 or $232.

I love some of the cars I've seen:

The Lambo was at the track (can't wait to drive it!), the (very blurry) Ferrari and Tesla were out and about in Amsterdam.
I've also seen several Fisker Karma's, a Rolls or two,  an i8, some Bentleys, dozens of Tesla Model-S's, and several other Ferraris and Maseratis!

Warning - rant coming.

On the other end of the spectrum, there seems to be no end to the European variations of a tiny cube with 4 wheels. And it's not just the "all-but-unknown-to-Americans" brands (Skoda, Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Daihatsu, Rover, Citroen, Fiat, Daewoo, .....); the luxury brands are in the market too. BMW 1-series hatchbacks are everywhere, Audi has an A-1 (with a 1.2 liter engine making 86 hp?!?), and even Mercedes has an A-series. It's awful! 

I'm sure their owners think the same of me in my mammoth SUV, and I might agree with them by the time I get out of here, but for now I can't stand them!

I can't even bring myself to take pictures of most of them as it would seem to give them legitimacy, but I did snap one of this "X1-M", of which I'd never heard. Further research tells me that this is an X-1 with the "M-sport package", which likely attempts to boost apparent speed with decals and leather. The "xDrive28i" version of the X-1 (the marketing guy that approved the naming of these should be transferred to the mail room) does have respectable numbers, despite the "28" being used to describe a 2.0 liter twin turbo instead of its former designation for the non-turbo inline 6 that served the 3-series so well for so long. My experience driving the turbo-4's as loaners in Louisville was not at all good however; maybe they've improved...

That's all for now - thanks for reading!