Halloween!

Halloween was a blast this year. First we went to visit our friend John, who was stuck in the hospital post-surgery. We were careful to hide our costumes on the way in and out of the hospital (they were a bit gory), but we had fun showing them to John in the privacy of his room. Iggy was there, too, and had us all in hysterics with his Mexican wrestler get-up.

Then we were off to Pete's house-party. He went all-out with the decorations, and we had great fun playing with Elli's cockroach cake and commenting on all our friend's costumes. The outstanding costume there was Wilson's Operation game guy. Maybe next year he can make it work, too!

By 1:00 the party was just getting loud and festive, but we skipped out anyway and headed to the always great Boom Chicago Halloween party. The theme this year was "thriller", and many of the costumes were based on horror movies. Highlights of the night included at least 5 separate people dressed as Alex from Clockwork Orange, two guys dressed as the ghost from The Ring (dancing on stage to a great DJ), and, oh yeah, me! I took home the top prize for most original costume! You can see my "award-winning decapitated head in a microwave" above. I was a surprised as anybody, but I think it was the functional things that sealed the deal: it had a flashing LED light inside, and the door opened so I could drink (and breath).

Elli gets a well-deserved honorable mention for her "knife in the head crazy chef" costume. It also looks great on Nick!

Chocolate and Delft

With our goodies bag, full of yummy chocolate we made

For my friend Silvia's bachelorette celebration, several girls went to De Lelie in Delft for a chocolate workshop.
It's a very nice store with lots of delicious chocolate. The class is pretty big, there are about 4 groups including 2 bachelorette party group.
I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are some chocolate with Delft theme.. The look delicious!

Art-Zuid

There is an art exhibition: ARTZUID, in south amsterdam area. Zuid means south. This is an exhibition of outdoor sculptures placed in the green median in the Apololaan area.
A lot of bizarre sculpture and some controversial, such as the woman with limbs amputated. Weird. We went today by bike on the way back from kayaking at Amsterdam Bos.

Tom Claassen - Carcrash

Florentijn Hofman - Rottend Fruit en Wespen

Kim De Ruysscher - Inside

Zhang Hongbo - Fat Lady

OK, now some of the kayaking pictures. We were supposed to go camping this weekend, but the weather is sooo bad on Friday and Saturday; wind and rain... but Sunday is okay so we went kayaking with Cathy. It was a good idea - so relaxing ! It's nice to see so many trees and green colours and the natural landscape. Living in a crowded city such as Amsterdam sometimes feels busy all the time, and noisy. A short break to the countryside is necessary. Balance is important :)

This time we rented 2 person kayak + a dog in the middle :) Nick is a free loader!

Funny self portrait...look at Nick ! :D

Cathy in action . She ran 10km before this.

De Hartjesdagen

Only in Amsterdam.
This is a annual festival in August, take place in Zeedijk which is on the Red light district and Chinatown. . The translation is literary 'Days of Little (cute) heart'. It is 3 days festival with all kinds of festivities. More about this festival, click http://www.dehartjesdagen.nl/
The highlights including Opera singing from windows on Saturday and on Sunday is the competition of ( I don't know how exactly to describe this)... but where men wearing woman clothing and women wearing man clothing.... costumes, as you may says..The festival is not to be mistaken with the gay event, because straight people also taking parts.

There are judges along the zeedijk alley, where the contestant walk up and down and show their costume and make up.Judge point #1

Talking to the judges on the window

There are quite a lot of drag queen... and some costumes are very interesting.
The band was great ! We had so much fun people watching and eat festival food, bubble teas and enjoyed the music... wish I know the name of the band.
What a great city we live in ! Gorgeous town and so enjoyable... in summer days especially :)

Busy July

One afternoon at the park

Time goes fast.. I need to slow down and look around. There are so many things going on in Amsterdam. The city is now buzzing with tourists. Buses , canal boats and rental bikes are everywhere.
Here are some of our highlights in July 2009.

- 4th of July camping in Texel island.

Dutch NavyBig ferry to Texel, usually depart every hour. It takes 20 minutes and it is really big!

Very patriotic dogSpacious camp site

Nick like the beach, but sometimes his eyes got sands... poor thing..

smores..Well, it is Dutch camping... so the camp site has a nice swimming pool ! lol..We can't resist to take a group picture with the salon as background... :p

- Scooter ride

We are at the tip of Java island, Amsterdam

We went a few times to the Amsterdam bos this summer. It's such a nice place with gigantic trees.
With rented electric scooter, we strap a basket on Clay's scooter for Nick. He was really enjoyed the ride. In Amsterdam bos, we ate at Pancake house and visited the Goat Farm there.

Very nice outing.Yummy pancakesVending machine for dog treats.. They are very handy.A hen and 3 of her chicksThe pig also function as a couch for this young goat...Goat milking machine... the farm making biologic /natural goat cheese

- Outdoor movie at the Hermitage museum. The museum is having Russian theme movie night. So we went to see the film with a few friends, Dr. Zhivago. It was freezing ! They provide blanket and we even brought fleece sleeping bag, but it is a looooong movie ! It was start at 10pm and finish at 2:00am ! There was an intermission in between.
The Hermitage has a beautiful courtyard.

- Gay Pride parade

Always a big celebration in Amsterdam. We went to the Drag Queen olympic and it was really fun show. We had a great time there and after that we went to see outdoor film at Vondelpark. The Film museum is always have a few outdoor movie during summer. The ticket is only €3. I really love the movie which is The General. It's a silent movie and the soundtrack is done by Japanese orchestra which is fabulous music. Highly recommended.Film museum in Vondelpark.. very nice atmosphere at nice, really pretty...

- Birthday parties

Several friend's birthday parties, since the weather has been nice both are outdoor celebration.Emily's surprise party at Westerpark

Kamran's birthday at Vonndelpark

-Kayaking in Amsterdam Bos
It was an Meetin event that Marta organized. Clay took Nick at his kayak. He chose the 2 person kayak so Nick can have some space. I think he done really well for the first time kayaking.. Next time need a floating device just incase.

Kayaking group

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Random

I guess bicycle is a great transportation device. Usually it is transporting a person or two or three.... and apparantly you can transport a fridge a well, if you want to.
Off course you don't see this very often, but yes, occasionally.... From far away, the person looks real...cool !
This is at a parking lot by the office buildings in Biljmer, what's that mean ?? Place to gather under a tree ?? (scratching my head)...

Sailing trip to Ijjselmeer

The whole crew on the last day in Hoorn

Clay and I had such a great time last year on the sailing trip with Clay's company to the islands in theNorthern part of Holland that we decided to organize a sailing trip ourselves this year. We booked a boat from the same company as before, but there are many boats to charter and we decided to go with smaller boat than the last trip. Her name is Zwarte Bonsem which means Black Pole Cat. She is about 25 meter long - 2 masts with 4 sails. When the main sail is raised

The boat a little old and I was a little disappointed; 1- we didn't go to the islands as I expected and 2, the boat is less nice than I expected. When sailing, everything depends on the wind. The wind at that time came from North and it would take a long long time to reach the islands. If the trip was a week trip, that would be possible. Instead, we stayed on the Markemeer (lake north of Amsterdam). We couldn't really complain: the lake is so big that it almost feels like you are on the ocean.

Skipper (front) and First Mate (at the wheel)

Skipper Frans brought his dog Fox, and he was great. He got so excited every time we weredocking and when we started sailing... he can sense if something is going to happen. He likes to do high fives, just like Nick.
Nick stayed at home as he is a sailing virgin and probably would not get along with Fox.

After a few hours sailing, the toilet was not working - no water coming to the tank, so we go back to basics, flushing the toilet with a bucket of water. We stopped at the tacky tourist town of Volendam for an hour to fix the toilet. It was actually an easy fix. Then we set sail again to Monickedam, which is a charming little town. What a beautiful village. We stayed the night in Monickedam.

Monickedam at night - so romantic and very picturesque,.. imagine the sky with lots of stars..

We cooked most of our meals ourselves. We ate bacon and eggs all 3 mornings, had burgers, chorizo stew, chicken and potatoes... we ate good! But now Clay wants to be a vegetarian for a few weeks: too much bacon I guess...
First mate giving instructions to raise the sail. it was a lot of fun...

The next morning we set sail to HOORN. While sailing, most of the time after the sails are set is spent just laying around... drinking bubbles with strawberries. The weather was AMAZING !! A few people were very brave and swam in the freezing cold water...

I can't believe our luck! So beautiful.. and now it's cold and raining and blah...


Anyway, back to the sailing trip... we ate good and drank good and played a lot of games. We laughed and laughed. Marta was so funny, she actually made Clay cry laughing during a lively game of spoons. What memories. Clay and Iggy played ukulele - what a great instrument to bring on a sailing trip.

It was 3 nights, 4 days on the boat, so we got a pretty long weekend. We spent the last night in the town of Hoorn. Hoorn is the most beautiful small town in Holland, I think... so charming. Remind me to take you there if you visit Holland. Hoorn is very picturesque and the harbour was filled with beautiful small boats and yachts. They had fabulous restaurants - makes me want to buy a vacation house there. We stayed a little longer in Hoorn on the last day. Some friends went running and swam at the beach. I swam for 10 minutes. The water was freezing, but the sun was hot and it was refreshing. 10 minutes was plenty!That's me ...

We got back to Enkhuizen around 4 pm on Monday, spoke with the owner of the boat and thanked her for the good time we had. Everyone had a blast and what a trip, we shall sail again for sure.