Jonathan, Irena and the kids visited us in Georgetown yesterday and we had a great afternoon in the city.

It was very warm so we stayed mainly in the shadow, and walking along the waterside.

Some pictures.

It's nice to live in a city for a while. We were out of coffee so I just walked to CVS to pick up some.

Many houses in Georgetown are from the colonial era. This gives the city an European feel, especially in the smaller backstreets.

I'm working from D.C. this week, from the house where Sasha is staying for her internship. It's on P Street in Georgetown, and falls under the "Zone 2" parking restrictions. Without a permit you can park on the street only for two hours.

So, every two hours I have move our car. This is funny, because there are so many empty parking spots during the day.

Petra has kindly offered that we can park at their house, a few metro stops away. If the moving becomes bothersome I'll park there for a few days.

We're in the African Department of the I.M.F. this afternoon. Sasha has to wrap some things up and I'm doing some work on my websites.

I arrived in Washington D.C. Thursday night. Friday I worked remotely; it's great to be able to telecommute every now and then. At work we're wrapping up a major release, so I'm "bug scrubbing" our tracking system and discussing bug fixes every day.

A delegation of a European customer visited our headquarters in New Jersey this morning and I spent three hours with them (through a conference call). This is a major financial institution, and they were one of the first large customers for my product a few years ago. It's great to see them using the product, and talk with them about their needs. The product is deployed in several of their data centers now and they're using it extensively.

By chance I visited a second huge customer in the afternoon. They are located in the Research Triangle which makes it easy to stop by and discuss things. That was a productive visit as well.

It's great to make software that solves real needs.

Tomorrow Vandaag, a genever bar with a Dutch theme, will open in the East Village in New York City.

Vandaag will serve Dutch snacks and food such as bitterballen and hete bliksem and will carry a large selection of genever cocktails and other drinks.

Dutch-inspired dishes
'Vandaag' is a Dutch word that means 'today'. Manager Brendan Spiro describes this a reference to the seasonality of the ingredients that are used on the menu.

Mr Spiro: "Nothing is fully traditional Dutch, but the food is inspired by Dutch and Danish dishes using a profile of locally sourced ingredients." An example of this is the burger, which is modeled after the Dutch slavink. Other Dutch items on the menu include stroopwafels and Frisian suikerbrood.

Genever
Genever has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. In September 2008 Bols, a Dutch genever producer, launched a new a marketing campaign targeting bartenders across the USA to establish Bols as an innovator in cocktail-making and to promote the genever drink.

Robert Simonson, a wine and spirits journalist, wrote for the New York Times Diner's Journal about genever:

Genevers (also spelled jenever) — from which the English word “gin” derives — are often aged. They are typically headier, more malty and sweeter than London dry style gins. Mixologists have recently embraced genever as a style of gin closer to the ones used by their storied 19th-century predecessors like Jerry Thomas. At Vandaag, the genevers will be served chilled and in the traditional tulip-shaped glasses found in Amsterdam’s genever bars. Filled to the lip, one traditionally bends over the glass for the first sip before taking the drink in hand.

This is the first Dutch bar to open in New York City after the closure of Danku in January this year (see our list with all restaurants, bakeries and stores in the United States).

Vandaag
103 Second Avenue (Sixth Street), East Village
New York, NY