Copenhagen in January

Since we have never traveled with a pre-ordained itinerary (except in Israel that one time), we don't know what we might be missing, as travelers without a plan. There are upsides to both methods.  If you know what you are doing when you wake up, then you don't need to spend any time making decisions.  But if it turns out you need a nap in the middle of your planned day, then that might throw everything off.  If you already have tickets to something, then you don't worry about all the other stuff you might be missing.  And so on.

We did spend some time the night before making a list of places that interested us.  Some of them were just too far away, many of them were closed on Mondays, and some were just things to make sure to see but did not require any commitment of money.  We have these two-day bus passes, so we had a strong incentive to ride the bus as much as possible (and not the Metro so much because it is underground and you can't see anything).

I wanted to just get the feeling of where we are in the daylight by riding a bus around town first, so that's what we did. It is the middle of winter so there is nothing blooming and the trees are bare. The buildings are massive and old but well-maintained. The famous and fanciful Tivoli Garden is closed this month but we could see through the fence what a jam-packed amusement park that is, and there were nice beds of blooming hyacinths and purple cabbage.

A big amusement park right in the middle of town. We saw the same thing in a city in Sweden also.

There are canals and boats and lots of water in general. Many more cars and wider roads than in the smaller cities in the Netherlands.  Rebecca, being competitive and biased, had to verify that Copenhagen actually has more cyclists than any other city.  In fact, 50% of its residents commute by bike, so they win. But Copenhagen did not find its way into her heart -- all day she kept trying to figure out why people feel so strongly that this is the city to visit.  She cited this fact (from somewhere) that you know within 0.3 seconds whether you are attracted to a person, and she says that she also knows very quickly whether a city has something special for her.  Prague did not, Vienna did.  Alas, Copenhagen was not her cup of tea.

I have not been traveling non-stop for the last three weeks, so I am not quite as quick to judge. I will say that I should have done more homework before we got here because it would have been more fun to know something about that palace or that large square, but it is still always interesting to be in a new city.  A disappointing number of American businesses have taken up residence in the downtown pedestrian mall area (in other cities you might not think of it as a mall, but this one just looked more current day commercial than Maastricht or Amsterdam).  There is a lot of attention to the detail of moving water through all these areas with impermeable surfaces.  I guess they have learned some lessons. With wide sidewalks, paved bike lanes, hard-scaped median strips, bus lanes and car lanes, they have to have a place for water to move, so we are constantly stepping over little berms and ditches (Jon and R. probably didn't notice this, but I am always wishing for less pavement).

We got off the bus and walked toward the harbor,

saw the Opera House looming in the near distance, crossed some bridges and got back on another bus, headed to a museum I had picked out.  When we were in Spain, I realized that we all spend a lot of tourist time admiring the castles and palaces of royalty and the rich and we don't often get to learn about the regular people. So I wanted to go to the Museum of the Worker.

First we needed some sustenance so we went down to this period piece of a cafe (truly, on purpose, a cafe that sells food from the 1950s, with the look and feel of that time).  Everything was in Danish but our waiter patiently translated the whole menu for us.

Lots of fish, pickled fish, some traditional potato dishes, all as open-faced sandwiches.  Jon ordered traditional Danish pickled herring, Becca had a potato-egg-herring sandwich and I had a vegetarian dish that was created after the war to resemble a fish sandwich when they had a shortage of fish. It looked like a piece of fried fish but it was a large slice of parsnip.  Delicious.  Their parsnips are not at all stringy, it was tender and tasty. Nothing like fish but I loved it.

From left; parsnips, pieces of  pickled fish with hard-boiled egg and potatoes and whole slab of  pickled fish and onions.
All are on bread, although the pieces of chewy whole grain strain the definition.

Then we went up to tackle the museum.  Once again it was almost all in Danish, with a few English signs sprinkled around.  It was hard to get a grasp of the story line, but the basic message was that Danish workers had to adjust to factory life with the Industrial Revolution, they organized early, they were persistent in their efforts to get better conditions, there was a strong socialist movement.  We got a better idea of what human automation looked like about 75 years ago. There was a whole floor devoted to show a real apartment that three generations of Danish workers lived in for almost a century.  It seemed like there was a lot of focus on the 1950s at this museum and we were reminded that the people in the US who just keep saying they want to go back to that time must be white men because it wasn't so great for all the other people. It probably wasn't even completely great for the white men but they "remember" the part about the women doing all the support work and taking care of all the home details without a fuss. (At some point I know I heard R. whisper to Jon that there may be a reason that we tend to go see the rich people stories. Democratic socialism doesn't compete with royalty.)

We returned to 2018 and walked through some more cityscapes.  Rebecca continued to feel underwhelmed.  Probably it is like going to a movie after everyone in the world has said it is the best movie ever, and then you find that it isn't really as good as they kept saying.  We stopped at a Moroccan cafe near our building and had a delicious veggie samosa with three salads (what we really wanted).  The beetroot salad was everything we could have hoped for. And the chai latte came in a huge glass, which is not characteristic of this region.

Back to our apartment for naps and recuperating.  After a few hours, I started to feel that we should get back outside one more time.  It took lots of discussion to get us all back out the door (Becca did not feel the need but she reluctantly joined us).  It was raining and cold. 

The bicyclists were not deterred by the rain.

I wanted to go back to Nyhaven and walk through that area since it is one of the neighborhoods that just looks old style Danish. We did that but it got windier and colder and wetter and that was enough of that.  We had to wait for a return bus for way too long. Stopped at the local supermarket for some more chips, a cucumber, some cherry tomatoes so Jon could make us some very satisfying sandwiches for a late dinner (as we were walking around, R. vetoed every option for dinner as too expensive. If we are going to spend twice or three times the normal amount of money, then the food has to be that much better, and we know that won't be the case... she is even stricter than Jon about spending money.).

I felt better that we had gone out once more, R. told me I need to get over that feeling that we need to do more -- but who gets to go inside and call it a day at 4:15 PM? Had I known it was raining so hard, I might not have been so insistent. But I got to see the Opera House in its nighttime lit-up version, we looped through all those touristy areas on the bus again and recognized them, and Rebecca told us everything she could remember of the first four books of the Narnia series that she read many, many years ago. That is how Becca copes with being in places she would rather not be in, as her siblings well know.

Schiphol Airport Day

We didn't think this was going to be our focal point for the day, but that's how it ended up -- just like at home, when you want to travel any distance that is about as far as Boston or closer, it is possible that flying will take as much time as driving. We have observed this many times. But at least when you are in a foreign country, it is more interesting and the food is different.

Jon was in much better condition today after a full day of rest and abstinence from food. He was ready to resume travel.  In hindsight, he says he was probably sick and not just suffering from his chronic stomach troubles.  In some ways this is better because we can then hope that he will return to eating with the rest of us soon.

Our host came to say goodbye and retrieve the keys at 11:00.  We chatted for a few minutes, learned that her family came from Turkey and her parents never learned to speak Dutch. To this day she and her siblings speak Dutch to each other but her mother cannot participate. It makes me wonder what language the children do share with their mother. Didn't occur to me to ask.

For me, Dutch is so far from English.  I ask Rebecca to look up words that seem to be warnings because they are so prevalent (let op means pay attention, for example. Who would ever guess that?).  I have never had any experience with German.  When we were in the museum in Amsterdam listening to an audio thing, R. commented that it always sounds like the Swedish Chef on Sesame Street. She uses Google Translate often, which is an amazing tool.

Anyway, we got on the bus and the train, zoomed off to Schiphol Airport which R. says is the third busiest in Europe.  For some reason she has a lot of fun facts stored up about this particular airport even though this was her first time there.  The train station is right in the airport and the way they divide the crowds and security lines is efficient and smart -- there is no central check-in location, you get sorted by departure plans immediately.  The security line takes 5 - 10 minutes and then you hang around in this lounge area because they don't tell you which gate until the last minute.  So everyone watches the monitor and eats and drinks and shops, and then groups get peeled off as the planes are ready to load.  The price of the food made R. squirm but at least it was real food.  I had a fine tomato mozzarella panini for about $8 which kept me alive and happy.

Waiting for Jon to return from his wanderings so we can follow(?!?) everyone one else to the gate.

In spite of all the crowd control efficiency, the departure was late. So we were at the airport for well over three hours before our plane was announced.  By the time we took off, it was 3:45 and getting dark.  We slept the whole time on the plane -- getting down the runway took a very long time but the time in the air was exactly an hour -- and woke up in the dark in Copenhagen.

Industrial Amsterdam soon after take off.

Another big, busy airport.  Another language, another currency.  We bought two-day passes for public transportation and then walked the whole way to our apartment.  Another city with lots of canals and waterways. Our Airbnb is in a huge apartment building with at least one courtyard in the middle (haven't explored in the daylight yet).  Again we have tons of space. But somehow the nicely stocked kitchen has not one single pot or pan, which definitely cramps our style.  Jon and Becca went out for provisions and brought back plenty of food that doesn't need a stove. They even got ice cream.

These two can talk about football or hockey or particular football players forever.  It is nice to be so far from the news but we can't help checking our usual news sites (UGH) and seeing that things are still as bad as ever.

Football in Denmark, and not the kind with a round ball.

Copenhagen is vast, with a huge array of things to see and learn. So much to see, so little time.

Amsterdam

Jon's stomach kept him awake in the night, so he didn't want to come with us today.  Our plans changed right from the beginning. Of course we didn't try to talk him into coming with us but it was sad to leave him by himself while we headed off to Amsterdam.

We left the apartment right on time and it was pitch dark and silent outside. No one was in the streets.  We caught the bus to the train, made the connection immediately and headed off to the big city.  Our destination was a waffle place that opened at 9 AM, and Becca knew there were only about 10 seats in this little restaurant so we needed to be early -- neither of us likes to wait in line.  We were the first ones in and we sat right next to the cook who moved expertly around his tiny kitchen, spreading batter on griddles, chopping fruit, rolling and filling pancakes. It was a front row seat. He knew everything about food safety. Becca was pleased to see the two co-workers talking and working at the same time, even singing along to the radio, but their hands never stopped moving.

Rolled pancake (crepe) with vegetables and gouda.

Quintessentially Dutch corner building.

The first time we've seen a tea stick.

We had a lovely breakfast and then headed out to be tourists.  This is one city that has plenty of tourists even in the middle of winter (Jon and I are accustomed to having museums to ourselves, to finding no lines, and occasionally eating alone in restaurants).  We had not thought ahead enough to realize that we should have made reservations to see the Anne Frank house.  When we got there we learned that it was sold out for today but I also saw that it was a destination that I might want to skip anyway.  There is a whole museum space built around the tiny house, and there are crowds of people waiting in line.  Not really my speed.  Maybe another time.  We walked to another museum that interested me: Amsterdam Museum.  The history of Amsterdam, in connection with other historical events, and how the current identity came to be.  Just our kind of museum, with a clear story line and good words.  And just to show how advanced they are in this country, they offer to loan anyone a lightweight stool to carry around the museum.  It was perfect and increased my capacity to stop and read signs and watch little videos and gaze at art.

Outside it was cooler than we had expected, and pretty grey.  We walked along the canals, went to see the Dam Square, wandered through the Red Light District, admired the blocks and blocks of tall skinny houses tucked in tightly next to each other. 

Note the building to the left has a forward tilt, compared to the
building off the image, and has a hoist support at the top for
lifting large items (i.e. furniture) into the upper windows.

Eventually it felt like it was time for lunch so we went to a little Malaysian restaurant where all the customers appeared to be Asian. Delicious curry chicken soup and a mildly spicy beef dish. We ate happily.

We didn't really want to go to another museum but we had a lot of the day left to use up before our appointment to go on a canal boat cruise to see the light show.  We meandered around some more and decided it was too cold and I was done with walking on all this pavement.  Got on a tram and rode to a random destination, then figured out what we really wanted to do and headed back to Centraal.  We wanted to hang out in a public library and luckily there was a very convenient one just a couple blocks away.  Spent a couple hours reading, knitting, charging up Becca's phone.  Rejuvenated, we went back out into the night and found our boat.

On our nighttime cruise, it was too dark and drizzly for a picture. This was from our earlier walk.

This cruise idea came from our host in Maastricht, and if we had known that Jon wasn't going to be with us, we wouldn't have bought three tickets and we might have not stayed so long in Amsterdam. But we didn't want to waste the tickets so we dutifully got on the 7:40 boat with all the other Dutch and American tourists.  The light show was a collection of 23 installations created by artists from around the world especially for this location.  The general theme was "the medium is the message" and the narration attempted to link these various pieces together.  Less is more when it comes to explaining art.  Some of it we liked very much (the giant dandelion fuzz lights dangling over the canal, the lanterns made of old washing machine tubs) and some we didn't understand and some were entertaining.  The boat ride was worth it by itself, though, because we got to toodle around in the canals and see the city from that angle.

Another super smooth train ride, 10 minutes on the bus and we were back home in Utrecht. Jon was somewhat better after a day of rest, still not eating anything.  Becca and I ate up all the leftovers from last night and had a nice cup of tea.

I have never been to Amsterdam before and it was a good long day of finally getting to see it for myself with an excellent, patient tour guide.  We obviously barely scratched the surface but it was enough for now.  I can see why so many people like it so much.  Very cool.

Utrecht

We didn't race out of town, but we were on a train by noon, heading north to the bigger cities.  Jon got us some nice sandwiches from a supermarket that was right in the train station (so civilized) -- obviously the prices were very reasonable or we would have had to wait for other opportunities for lunch. 

The train uses the same travel card as the bus uses, so Rebecca organized our fare (thanks Mom) and got us a discount because she long ago decided to pay the big bucks to get a 40% discount.  We are helping her to recover her money.  And then when we got to Utrecht, she was delighted to find that the exact same cards work on the buses here.  This is the height of civilization.

Two hours of quiet, smooth travel past gardens and farms and canals and villages and extremely cute little ponies. Lots of leeks growing, some kale type stuff, some kind of mustardy cover crop. It was a cloudy, grey day so it didn't look idyllic, but everything was organized and FLAT and tidy.

Utrecht is about three times the size of Maastricht, with taller buildings and many more people on bikes (the population of Rotterdam (double Utrecht), Utrecht and Maastricht is less than the total population of Fairfax County, just for perspective).  When the traffic light changes, the bikes come charging across the intersection.  Many more bicycles than vehicles, it seems.  Children are behind parents in little seats, or in front in little seats between the handlebars, friends ride on the back luggage rack, multiple children ride in these nicely constructed wooden boxes that are built onto the front of the bike.  No helmets, no bike clothes, just regular skirts and dresses and street shoes and down jackets.  The bike lanes are much smoother than the pedestrian lanes but it would be foolish to walk in the bike lane. As R. points out, you can't hear them coming.

We walked through the shopping areas, the old city, saw the ancient tower, peeked into the tiny cathedral (and read later that it used to be much bigger but they ran out of money in the 1400s before they got the flying buttresses up and the nave collapsed, so the tower is now a separate structure with a square around it, instead of being part of the church). 

Stopped for a snack of hot fries with some kind of peppery herbal mayonnaise (R. says to remember that the place is called Mannekenpis and you can just infer what the sauce was made of).





There are big canals running through the city but it is too warm for them to freeze right now. It started to get dark and cold and I had used up my walking time so we got back on the bus and headed back to our Airbnb.

This one is an entire apartment, with a train track just across the way.  At first this seemed a little unfortunate, but in fact we cannot hear a sound when the trains go by. They are going by all the time but they must not be squeaking and rumbling and our windows must be very good. The host met us at the door and gave us a tour and then left to go stay with a friend while we occupied her whole house. This seems a little weird to me, but this is her system and this income is important to her, we surmise. We have tons of space.  As soon as we came in, R. and Jon fell asleep on the couch for so long that I started to get hungry.  Eventually they got up to go in search of dinner, either shopping or take-out, while I stayed home in this very quiet space.

We had a simple dinner of pasta and vegetables and schnitzel and we have to go to bed early because our plans are more ambitious than usual for tomorrow. We actually have to wake up and leave the house by 7:48 in the morning. Yikes. R. has our route all planned to get us to our first destination by 8:55.

Another Small Museum Trip

This morning we decided to accept the coffee offered by our Airbnb host, even though neither of us is a coffee drinker. It seemed polite.  She brought it to our room with two lovely pieces of pound cake.  We added sugar and milk to the coffee and it was still strong but tasty.  Our room is on the second floor of a house that usually has multiple students in it, but they are all on vacation so the house is very quiet.  It is a little hard for us, as Americans with different expectations, to have to go out into the hallway to use the bathroom, but there is no one here so we shouldn't really care.  The room is full of furniture: inside the bay window there is a nice wooden library table with a leather chair, then in clockwise order there is a large IKEA wardrobe that we have not opened, a mantelpiece with hot beverage supplies on it and a gas heater below, then a white IKEA dresser (again unopened), then a chaise longe (lounge?, longue?) that I love but do not know how to spell, then a long thin IKEA mirror, then a pair of night tables flanking a queen sized bed with a memory foam mattress.  We each have our own comforter (no top sheet) with duvet cover.  The light fixture about the bed is exactly the same one as in Rebecca's apartment.  IKEA. Doesn't that sound like a lot of furniture for one room? The floor is wide pine boards that look real. All the floors creak. The house is like the other houses on the street, brick with red tile roof and accents of stained glass above the bay windows. To get to the second floor, there is a staircase with 20 narrow steps -- I am very careful on these steps as I think of our friend who recently fell and broke her leg and shoulder, on steps that she knew very well.

 

We went to Rebecca's house and got organized for our expedition of the day.  Jon had wanted to go to an American cemetery for WW2 soldiers but that plan got revised (when R. and I said, but what would we do there?) to a trip to a WW2 museum in nearby Beek.  We took a 40 minute bus ride north to a small town and spent about an hour or so in the museum. Most of the signage was in Dutch or maybe German but each sign included a section in English.  The museum told the story by a series of dioramas made of wax soldiers wearing uniforms, carrying weapons, in various scenes. Lots of artifacts.  My main take-away was to be reminded how horrible war is, and how many people all over the world died.  R. and Jon have a lot of facts and analysis stored in their brains, and there was a lot to discuss.  The Jewish part of the story had two rooms.  As R. pointed out, their version of Jews was blonde people since this is a blonde part of the world.  The museum definitely had a different perspective than a similar one in the US would have had -- the Americans were not center stage in any way.  Millions of Russians fought and died, playing a very big role in ending the war.  Pearl Harbor did not take up much space in the museum.

There is a circus in town in Maastricht and R. and Jon had some curiosity about it, so we decided to bustle back to find out whether we could go, but on the bus ride back Becca learned on her phone that all the tickets were sold out, so we didn't have to figure out how to race to a circus. That was fine with me. Instead we wandered from the train station to a very crunchy restaurant that Benjamin and R. had found when he visited, called The Broth Bar.  It felt like what we expect in the Netherlands -- progressive, health-conscious, clean, authentic, friendly.  Multiple babies around us with their dining parents. The bread was inedible, it was so full of grains.  We ate the beetroot hummus off the top, tried to eat some of the bread and put the rest in our pockets to feed the birds. My chicken broth was delicious, R's ramen was made with lentil noodles (ugh) and zucchini noodles (better). Jon's pea soup was yummy. 

We walked across a pedestrian bridge back into the part of town that has R's school and home. There were more crowds in the street than before -- maybe because the Christmas market is over.  The streets feel like streets in other European cities we have visited. 

We don't have this at home, unless it is manufactured at Disney World. The lights at this time of year make it especially charming, and there are people eating outside in heated tents (just like San Sebastian and Lucca and Rome etc.). Jon really wanted to try a waffle, even though R. assured him they were better in Amsterdam. He asked how he would know they were better unless we ate one here, so we got a sweet, chewy waffle from one of the many stores. Now we will have something to compare (it was delicious).

Time for naps and knitting and crossword puzzles when we got back to Becca's.  Finally Jon roused himself and went shopping for a few more ingredients for dinner.  The goal is to leave no leftovers in her fridge when we leave for ten days.  We had some fine garlic green beans and fried rice and a big salad.  

Tomorrow we hit the road again.  Maastricht was a fine place to land and get adjusted and it is very nice to be here with R. who knows how to use the bus system and how to get around effortlessly. She even collects up the bus passes after we get off the bus so we won't lose them (they are the kind that you add value to, and they have future usefulness so she is protecting her investment).

Wandering Through Becca's World

We traveled very few miles today, possibly only a couple, and mostly on foot.  Our goals were small: we wanted to see where Becca goes to school, her daily patterns, and we wanted to eat something yummy.

First we slept as long as we wanted. Maybe we even got caught up. That was excellent.  Then we met Rebecca outside her house, at the bus stop, at 10:30.  Her house is about 500 steps from where we are staying (I know this because I am my mother's daughter and I counted).  We took the bus to the other, artier, side of the river,

and we went to a nice cafe that Alissa and Becca had tried out a little while ago.  Becca assured us that the Dutch do brunch well, unlike dinner.  She was right -- and the portion sizes were larger than we expected.  Jon ordered chocolate milk and it turned out to be a tall glass of hot milk with chocolate shavings in the bottom.  The chocolate was delicious.  We got a brunch plate of stuff to share:  good bread, Guernsey butter, chutney and jams, a bowl of yogurt and fruit, slices of cheese and prosciutto (or something), scrambled eggs.  We ordered too much other food too and Becca had to take home her egg wrap. That meal got us all the way through the day.

We walked across the bridge (very scenic, up and down the river, not cluttered, the buildings are low and solid and architecturally coherent) to the fancier part of downtown where there are more shops and more cobblestone streets.

Wandered over to the School of Business and Economics, which R. says is the largest of all the various schools at the University.  Walked through the quiet halls, looked into small classrooms (class sizes are about ten), admired the technology that exists nowadays for giving presentations.  The teaching method in her program is that the students teach every class -- they are assigned well in advance, they do all the preparation, they lead the discussion.  The teacher chimes in when needed.  They are trying to give lots of practice in public speaking.  It sounds scary to me but also effective.  We looked at the cafeteria area where R. does most of her writing and preparing (she has discovered that working at home is not her best bet), along with lots of other people.

Since she lives here, she has never really been a tourist. She didn't know where we would go to learn about Maastricht.  Google directed us to one museum right near the Christmas market that is getting disassembled, but when we went in we learned that the museum has changed its mission since they didn't get enough customers who wanted to know about local history.  The current exhibit is by a local photographer who happened to be in New York during 9/11.  Umm, no thanks. So we went to the natural history museum as a second best option.

There was a display of super enlarged photographs of bugs.  Amazing colorful weird bugs.  Not exactly anything to do with the area.




Then the permanent collection was fossils and rocks and coal, but all the signage was in Dutch.  Luckily there was a movie and luckily it had English subtitles.  We learned that there was a dinosaur called Mosasaurus that was discovered right here in Maastricht because there used to be a body of water here (in the Cretaceous era) and now there is a lot of limestone that they use in their buildings -- that's how the bones were found.  R. says that particular dinosaur had a large role in Jurassic World and now she knows that her city is famous for that. There you go.

(Jon is now reading about the museum, in hindsight, and he finds that we missed a room that had a special curiosity in it: a rat king.  A rat king is a bunch of rats whose tails are all tangled together with hair and other stuff and this phenomenon happens in Germany the most. This is the most disgusting thing I can imagine and I am glad we missed it.)

Picture from Wikipedia.

My knee is a limiting factor, especially when walking on pavement and cobblestones. It makes R. feel sorry for me (I am used to my unwieldy gate) and she lets us sit down to rest whenever.  We walked home to her apartment and I took a nap while the two of them did crossword puzzles or something.  Then they finally went out shopping for dinner.  Jon made something with rice and sugar snap peas and a local ham/bacon that is available in so many different size packages that he had to buy it and see what it was.  Dinner at R's table was lovely. Her apartment is fully, fully furnished with everything IKEA and I like those dishes and pots. Nice quality.

The two of them could do crossword puzzles all night, but I reminded them that they had a plan to make reservations for another leg of the trip. Oh yes, woops. I walked home to take a bath in the gigantic bath tub that is almost as good as a hot tub while they planned Copenhagen and more.

There is nothing better than a no-travel day when you are on a big trip. And it took some digging, but we learned something new about Maastricht that R. didn't know before.

Keflavik to Maastricht

It was a long night of loud fireworks, so it was a short night of sleep.  We were at the airport with most of the rest of the tourist population at 6:15 in the morning.  It feels like everyone arrives and leaves in the early morning, but that's just because that's what we did.  The security line was packed.  Of note:  their TSA system is slicker than ours.  The plastic trays are returned to the front of the line without someone having to move them all in a big stack -- they just get delivered to a slot right where you need it. And when your tray is rejected (which four of ours were), there is an automatic arm that pushes your tray to another parallel track so the TSA folks can cheerfully take everything apart.  It felt non-stressful and efficient.  They didn't seem to be letting anything get past them.

The flight was uneventful except that I had one moment of worry that I had finally been struck down by the stomach virus that ravaged Anna's household the day before we left. Recent reports were that there were five patients throwing up in that house, with only Gordon (the post-op patient) spared, and he was diligently caring for all of them.  I woke up from a nap on the plane feeling terrible, couldn't find the throw-up bag anywhere, dragged myself up the aisle to the back of the plane, but gradually the feeling passed and I escaped the drama.  For the rest of the day, I was leery of eating much, but nothing bad happened.

We followed Rebecca's detailed instructions and found the bus stop.  The bus would make many stops on the way to Frankfort but we got off in Maastricht, the first stop just 90 minutes east.  It was rainy and dark and we were on a super highway so there wasn't much to look at. More napping.

Our cheerful daughter met us at the train station, bouncing down the steps as we stood admiring the giant rack of bicycles. 

She loves this city -- it is small enough for her to feel comfortable, public transportation is smooth and smart, the city is historic and well-maintained, every view is pleasing.  We could have walked the 20 minutes to her house but we took a bus. The whole city is festooned with Christmas lights, tasteful not tacky. We just missed the Christmas market by a day.  Rebecca has gained an appreciation for Christmas markets all over Europe -- she loves the lights, the feeling, the street food, looking at the stuff.  She would prefer smaller crowds so they don't slow down her walking, but the crowds are part of the fun.

Rebecca's apartment is a 10 minute walk from her school, a 10 minute walk from the market square, a 10 minute walk from most of what she needs, it seems.  She lives above a Domino's take-out store, by herself, in a very cute and well-furnished studio. The view out her front window is a big church on the far side of the circle, lit up night and day.  Our Airbnb is about a 5 minute walk from her house.

We looked for some place that was open on New Years for dinner. Rebecca warned us that Dutch food is not very good.  They eat meat and potatoes, not much in the way of vegetables. We ended up at a bar with loud American music (that we recognized, so it was not current day music) and had some soup and a shared plate of meat and potatoes.  Yep, not very good. But the venue was local and home-y and the experience was worth it. They don't serve water here unless you buy something else to drink, which is an affront to our American expectations.

Becca and Jon finishing a particularly clever Times Sunday crossword puzzle while waiting for the meat and potatoes.

We walked through the empty market square, it was raining, we caught the bus back home. Becca and Jon went in search of an open store and I went home.  No open stores. Oh well. We had tea and yummy McVitie's from our Iceland stash.  By 10:30 we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore after two nights of not much sleep.

We have arrived.