travelling

I am in Washington! It's really very nice to be here -- we had a great weekend together. I'm in the World Bank now, I'm writing this from a library.

I had a nice journey. The flight to Philadelphia took about 8 hours. It has been years since I flew so I really enjoyed it. Of course there was a movie, I saw "the Italian Job". Security was pretty tight on the airports. At Schiphol there was a interview, and everywhere there were extensive luggage checks.

In Philadelphia I took a domestic flight to Washington. I had 2 hours, so I looked around at the airport, and tried a real American hamburger. The flight to Washington was really short, it took about 40 minutes to get there. The plane flies right over the Potomac river, which makes for a great view over the city. You can immediately see the Capitol and other famous buildings. Sasha came to pick me up; it's very nice to be together. That evening we went to George Town, an older part of the city.

Finally, I'm in the plane now! After a lot of preparations and arrangement I'm going on holiday.

Of course, I'll be still reachable by e-mail (my hotmail address is the best). And for the bad guys: the house is locked and guarded by a nice electronic system.

I'll try to update the website when I'm there; probably not this weekend anymore though.

I've been preparing tomorrow's journey for over a week now: tickets, insurance, appointments.

But, as always, the night-before is a busy one. Daniel and I went to do some shopping (got a power converter for the States), and we had dinner together in Subways, to get into an American mood. The rest of the evening I've been packing my suitcase, and I'm ready to go now!

I've packed everything now and I'm leaving to Schiphol. The most convenient way is to take the Zuidtangent.

It's not the fastest connection (the train is), but I don't have to transfer, which is nice because of the suitcases.

The last two days I've been quite busy. The most important was arranging my plane ticket to go to Washington. My plane is scheduled for next Friday; I'm looking forward to it a lot.

I also sent the invitations for my graduation, October 15th. Of course all regular readers are invited -- the invitations should arrive today or tomorrow.

We spent this weekend in Antwerp, Belgium.

Friday afternoon I left Chess at lunchtime, and we took the train to the south. It was a very quick connection: at 15:30 o'clock we had checked in already. We stayed in a small hotel, Hotel Eden (click on 'Virtual Visit' for some nice surround pictures), located in the Diamond District. I've been in Antwerp twice before, but it was long ago so I didn't remember the city well. Once I was there with Joost, to visit the Vogeltjes markt. This Sunday we saw it again, quite interesting all these little birds and animals for sale.

The weather was marvellous! It was very sunny all weekend but never too hot. It's great that it stays nice outside till late -- at midnight it was still very busy in the city.

We had very enjoyable hours at the terrasses in the center. There is a surprising amount of squares. We thought we had found the Grote Markt, so we sat for a beer. When we left we saw another square, and said: "oh, that must be it!". A few minutes later we reached a third square, even bigger, and saw the street sign "Grote Markt".

Every restaurant had mussels on the menu; there was even an ice-cream place where they had them. Saw the big cathedral inside, as well as a diamond museum. It said that 85% of all global rough diamond trade goes through Antwerp, and diamonds account for 6% of Belgium exports... a huge industry. A funny place was the Frietkot museum.

One evening we had dinner at the only restaurant at the river Scheldt, het Zuider Terras.

Friday Ettie was in Haarlem; this weekend Alex & I spent in Brussels, together with Anja and Pleun. We saw the big marketsquare (La Grande Place), a big cathedral, the royal palace... was a nice weekend!