08 September 2009

adventures with Kristin (again)

since Kristin came to visit (again!), i once again had someone with whom to share in some random adventures (as well as having an excuse to do so). even though it was a bit rainy during her visit, we had a lot of fun exploring different places and laughing together a lot. the following are some of our adventures, with some pictures:

- the uitmarkt: the opening of the Amsterdam cultural season, which offers a ton of free music and events all close to my house. some things, like the large orchestra performance, we enjoyed tremendously. others, like the strange electronics + accordion show, were less enjoyable. and as delightful as it was to see Mary Poppins fly through the sky, the rehearsal did get a bit long after awhile - one can only hear the supercalafragilistic song so many times....

- taking the 'fast flying ferry' to Velsen-Zuid and then biking to the sea. since it poured while we were at the sea, the best part there was our break for coffee and apple pie. on the way back, we biked back through the (Zuid) Kennemerduinen, which is a lovely bike ride. Kristin and i also worked on our skills at taking pictures while biking - not so many turned out well but we did laugh a lot while trying.

- biking along the Amstel towards Ouderkerk. due to the weather, this was not quite as good as hoped (although i finally did get to explore one of the little walking areas along the route). on the bright side, we did get home in time to eat the best fries in the neighbourhood. and Kristin fell in love with dutch (indonesian?) saté sauce.

- Leiden, Den Haag and Scheveningen. first, we stopped in Leiden to visit a windmill museum. next stop was Den Haag, where we biked around quite a bit, saw a couple of the more famous buildings, and visited the military base. it was a crazy windy day, and on the way to Scheveningen, we managed to get blown off our bikes. what made it funnier was that Kristin managed to fall off only seconds after i did. i had slowed down and felt the wind pushing me towards the road. but as my bike was too tall for me, i couldn't really stop without falling. yet, as i swerved closer and closer to the road, i figured i might as well just abandon ship. although my shoe ended up a metre away, i did land on my feet. when i had recovered, i saw Kristin also standing over a fallen bike - apparently the wind had caught her, too. i can only imagine what a funny sight we must have been! i know it made us laugh for a long time. after that, we stopped biking for a bit - and decided to let the wind push us around on the pier at Scheveningen instead.

overall, it was a delightful visit - full of many good conversations, a few random adventures, and lots of laughter!


more pictures can be seen at my profile on Facebook.
with thanks to Kristin who took most of the pictures above.

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