rijstafeling

Vera and I went to Indrapura to have a vegetarian rijstafel. It was delicious and overwhelmingly deluxe, as expected.

trip to texel

Vera and I went way up north to Texel, an island of the northern coast of the Netherlands. This is a cute dog we met on the ferry.



This is the bat I purchased at the Texel Ecomare gift shop. (There aren't any pictures of the island proper, you see, because it was pouring rain just about the whole time we were there...it was a pretty wet and cold trip. Hence the new orange vest.)

vera keller, queen of the kitchen

Vera got creative with her bread shapes and baked a cithara.



And then she just kept on going...



Later we went out to visit the windmill museum, from which there's a great view of Leiden.

do not pass GO

Yesterday I braved the Bibliotheque nationale de France manuscripts division, near the Louvre.

At the entrance, you leave your yellow card to get a blue card and a green card.  At the request desk, you leave the green card with your request and get an orange card.  To pick up your microfilm or books, you leave the orange card at the desk.  When you return your materials, you get your original green card back again.  To leave temporarily (restrooms, coffee and candy machines) you take the blue card with you and show it on re-entry.  To leave for the day, you go to the central desk and get a white card, which you leave at the entrance with your blue card and your green card to finally get your yellow card back.

Can't you just picture me blundering around trying to figure this out, without knowing any French???

visit to Gouda

David, Vera, and I wandered around Gouda. We saw the town hall, a museum in an old convent, and (very) briefly visited a cheese museum.


Our friendly buurkat greeted us when we got home.

to market, to market

David arrived in town this morning via train, and we went to the market to have lunch. 
 
Basically we bought herring sandwiches, smoked eel, and fried calamari at the market stalls and sat down on the covered bridge in the shade to eat (and watch the random people dressed up in RenFair-type costumes wandering around for the Rembrandt Festival).
 
It was very hot today, but it's *pouring* now...thunder & lightning...

Rembrandt Faire

There were people in historical costume just wandering about Leiden today.



It was a bit surreal, but often very cute.

Nijmegen

Spent the day in Nijmegen, visiting Hans Thijssen and meeting various coauthors of the Boekverkopers van Europa book.  Incredibly useful trip.  Will be making use of what I learned immediately!
 
Also visited the Velorama bicycle museum and wandered around the city.  Saw where Marx's mother used to live.  Bought a pair of "vintage" black mesh gloves.
 
Photos to come soon.

Amsterdam

We found a cute little place that served decent coffee
(according to Vera) while visiting Amsterdam.



We also stopped by the secondhand market, where
Vera tried on some old theater costumes!

stilleven

touring Leiden

Vera and I went to visit the two main churches in Leiden yesterday. We ran across the monument to Scaliger, one of the more important academics way back when...





We also stopped by the "Linen Museum" and the usual street market. I found a stall that sold lumpia (in Dutch, loempia) and had several!

Venison with strawberry sauce

At the goodbye lunch for my Nederlands 1 class, I ordered a venison sandwich. Unfortunately what it didn't say in the menu was that it came drenched in strawberry sauce.



(And in case you were wondering, no, it wasn't very good.)

Truffle, the canal duck

Vera's baking

the first Mauritsstraat loaf of bread


braiding challah


and finally *three* pizzas!

moved in

Vera and I have moved into our new apartment in North Leiden and are happily settling in.

Vera has been baking fresh bread nearly every day--what a fantastic apartmentmate I've got! You wouldn't believe what she's managed to do with three pots, a toaster, and a hot-water boiler. It's like the tale of the stone soup (or something like that that involves more kitchen alchemy).

The good news is that we've got a two-story, three-bedroom apartment with wood floors, a large back garden, a shed for my bike, and lots of friendly cats in the neighborhood.

The bad news is that we haven't got hot water. The heater for the house is broken. We've been boiling hot water on the stove and carrying it upstairs to the tub to bathe in. It takes an awful long time for a rather small bath.

I've been taking lots of photos of the house, the garden, and Vera's baked goods, but haven't really had time to edit them for posting yet; more to come soon...

buurkatten

under my bedroom window


basking in the sunshine


perhaps not so cute in the trash can?

Trip to Amsterdam

Vera and I went to Amsterdam to go to the rommelmarkt, i.e., rummage sales. Unfortunately we didn't realize that "open every day of the week" meant "every day except Sunday". So instead we did some touristy things--we went to the "floating tulip market", through the red light district, etc.



We indulged in a steak lunch at a kosher restaurant next to the Opera House, then went to the Opera House box office and bought the cheapest possible tickets to see Writing to Vermeer on July 13th. There was an exceedingly weird sculpture in the Opera House lobby.



And finally we went to the Rijksmuseum for the rest of the day to see the "Masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum Collections" show. But since I couldn't really take any photographs in there, let me offer you instead the "Masterpieces of Amsterdam Signage"...


in the Opera House


by a canal


by the Rijksmuseum


by the Opera House


a Dutch clothing chain

I found the all these signs highly amusing, as you can probably tell.