Posts from — May 2010

We arrived in Schipool Airport close to on schedule and caught the train to Amsterdam Central Station where we were met by Fred & Barb right outside the station exit. It was great to see familiar smiling faces amid the thousands of people, bikes, barges, etc. The first thing you see when you exit is a three level bike garage where there has got to be 10,000 bicycles of all shapes, types, sizes and descriptions. After a short walk we arrived at our B&B and were met by the host – Jasper. After settling in we headed off on a walk in the Jordaan area. Amsterdam is a very large and very old City. The buildings are very old, lots of history, many are leaning, lots date back to the mid 1600’s and the canals are magical. Everyone has a bicycle and you learn pretty quickly that pedestrians really need to be aware because bikes have first priority. UPDATE! UPDATE! The bike garage is 4 levels of bicycle parking….. we’ve added pictures below.

Our Holland and France adventure has begun. Here we are sitting in the Maple Leaf Air Canada Lounge waiting for our plane to arrive from Frankfurt. We checked Lufthansa schedules before we left Kamloops and knew that the flight was delayed leaving so it is obvioulsy going to be late arriving. Right now it looks like about one hour late, so it’s going to be a pretty tight connection when we arrive in Frankfurt to get to our next flight into Amsterdam. Nothing we can do about it so we are going to sit back have a drink and watch all the hub-bub of an international airport. We had hoped to put up a picture; however in our efficiency for packing lightly the cord to connect the camera to the computer is in the suitcase which is sitting on a luggage cart on the tarmac. So, how did we get the picture posted????? Well our new netbook computer has sd-card slot and is that ever slick….. no more wired connections for us. Stay tuned once we get to Amsterdam.

On Monday we had a day trip to Merritt to visit the grand kids…… oh ya and see the parents as well! Great Gramma and Great Grampa came along and it was a great day. We met the Princeton group at the Merritt Aquatic Center; it’s a favorite spot for the kids, lots to do and burn off some of that boundless energy. After the swim we headed off for lunch. Pictures are attached.