Saturday morning Rosa picked us up at 7.00 o'clock. Rick and Rosa had invited us to spent a weekend in their cottage, in Reedsville, Virginia.

Reedsville is located about 140 mile from Arlington, and we were ready for a long drive. On a weekend like this (it was Labor Day weekend) there is usually a lot of traffic, but the traffic was very smooth.

The day before we left there had been rumours that the gas supply would be reduced, and gas station across Maryland and Virginia would be closed. This was not true, but it probably scared a lot of drivers away from making long road trips. Gas prices have gone up quite dramatically the last weeks, up to $3,50 a gallon.

We had a smooth ride, and stopped at the same gas station as we did on our way to Williamsburg a few months ago. We were the three of us in the car, but we had quite some luggage so the car was fully packed.

Compare the gasprices with when we went to Williamsburg.

The harbor of Reedsville. A major industry in the village is fishing for menhaden, an oily little fish.

On the first day we visited Reedsville, a small village next to the cottage. We saw the harbor, and the The Gables. This is a very interesting building that was founded in the early 1900's partly with the parts of an old schooner, a wooden ship. The captain of that ship used many wooden parts of the ship for his new house, including the mast that is now standing across three floors in the center of the house.

We went inside the Gables house and met the owner, a very friendly lady.

We are leaving in 30 minutes to the Chesapeake Bay. It's Labor Day Monday, so we have a long weekend, and Rosa invited us to join her to her summer house.

We're leaving early, to beat the worst traffic -- it will be very busy on the road and it's a trip of a couple of hours.

The news coming from New Orleans is becoming worse and worse.

A week ago it was "just" about a city threatened by a hurricane. After the hurricane passed there was a sense of relief that the city didn't get directly hit. But the water that came afterwards turned out to be the real villain.

The situation looks extremely bad for the thousands of people who are still stranded in the flooded city. Let's hope everybody gets out as quickly as possible. It will take many months, likely years, for the city to recover.

Sunday we went for a long walk and we've visited the Roosevelt island. For a long time I've been wanting to see it, but I could never find out how to get there, even though it's very close to my work.

A few weeks ago I was making a phone call outside, when somebody asked me: "excuse me, how do we get to Roosevelt island?" I told him that I didn't know, but I recognized something in his accent and when I replied in Dutch the man was very surprised that we spoke the same language.

It was a very pleasant Sunday, with this two hour walk and a nice dinner.

Finally, after many tries, I reached the island.

Here we are, half-way the 'swamp-trail'.

An animal with a blue tail.

Deer.

Just next to the trail.

Statue of Roosevelt.

Friday night we went to the grand opening of Love, a new night club in DC. The building was a nightclub before, Dreams, but we had never been there.

We had tickets for the grand opening Friday and we had a very enjoyable evening. Entering the club was an impressive experience with at least 20 security guys in black suits at the door.

The place is very stylish: carpet, wooden walls, beautiful furniture -- very classy, like a very good hotel, just with music. I especially liked the 3rd floor, with the lounge seats, almost in a beach club style.

Thursday evening Rosa came for dinner.

We made mie. It's the first time that I cooked that here, and it took me a while to find the ingredients in the supermarkt. It came out quite nice, with spicy chicken, and a side dish of snow beans with mushrooms and nuts.

Rosa had brought deserts: brownie cookies and a mousse cake, delicious. We saw pictures of Sasha's vacation, and spent a nice evening on the balcony.

After our visit to the Natural History Museum two weeks ago, we went Cosi's to have lunch. Around the Mall there are not a lot of places to go for lunch in the weekend. Most restaurants are only open during the week, it's a business district. We had salads, sandwiches and coffee, and we took a picture of us together using the self-timer option.

After we had lunch we visited the National Archive. I have been there two years ago, but then I only saw the main documents. Saturday I found out that there is also a large museum in the building with many historical materials such as TV bulletins, papers and sounds recordings. I enjoyed it a lot and we'll certainly visit it again.

In the evening I cooked for the five of us. I made Chinese, and it was really fun to cook for a large group of people.

Last week I saw this interesting sign near the Old Post Office.

It's probably just my mind playing tricks.

Jaap and Mieke left yesterday morning from Dulles airport.

Obviously, we arrived there very early and the check-in line was short. Everything went well except that the airline clerk almost forgot to take out my parent's I-94 papers. That would have been inconvenient. Jaap and Mieke were flying with KLM/North West, and when we arrived at Dulles we saw that some of the maintenance personel of Nortwest was on strike. There were other people working instead of the strikers, so the airline could keep on flying.

We had coffee together, and after an hour or so I took the bus back to Rosslyn. It was sad to say goodbye, we had had a couple of very nice weeks together.

Today, Sunday, was a very happy day: I went to Dulles airport again to pick up Sasha. She's been with her parents the last few weeks and her plane arrived around 2 o'clock from Milan, Italy. It's wonderful to be together again.

When we were in line for the check in counter yesterday I saw that I had a missed call from Ettie. We called her back (using a phone card). Jaap and Mieke arrived safely Sunday morning in the Netherlands, and went to bed extremely early: 19:30 o'clock local time.

Last Saturday we visited the National History Museum. Friday we for some drinks in an Irish bar so it took some time to get up. We took the metro the Mall, the five of us.

We visited the museum of Natural History. It was very busy and the rooms with the most popular attractions such as the Hope Diamond were really crowded. We spent about two hours in the museum. I really enjoyed the collection of skeletons of prehistorics animals, and the sea-life collection.

Mieke in the metro.

Jerry and Marjolein.

The elephant in the main rotundra of the museum.

The skeleton of an underwater swimmer.

Dinosaur skeleton.

Mieke and the Hope Diamond.