“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The last box is off the deck here in our new Olympic Village home.
We’re down to dealing with some random pieces of furniture that don’t fit in our new space (anyone want to buy this desk?) and things are starting to look pretty organized, even though it’s mostly in a JFN (Just For Now) configuration.
Due to some logistics, we can’t finish dealing with the rest of our stuff in our Sechelt home until mid-October, so naturally there is only one thing a sensible person would do…
Go on a trip!
I’m flying with Air Transat to the U.K. for a press trip that will run September 4-11th. We’ll be checking out Buckingham Palace (hey Queenie!), doing some ziplining in Wales (what’s up with me and all these ziplines?) hanging around Snowdon, ending in Glasgow and, if all goes according to plan, generally having too much fun in too little time.
Kevin will fly over and join me on the 12th and then we’ll start our own tour. A little time in London, Paris, visiting some friends in Northern France and then up through Belgium, and finally hangin’ out in Holland for the last few days.
We’ll be back October 1st, just in time to get up to Sechelt and clean out the last of our stuff there.
Now all I have to do is find my suitcase…and my boots. Where are those boots?
If you have time, the Tin-Tin art museum in Brussels is a really great one, and our lunch in the museum cafe was one of our best meals of the trip. If you’re anywhere near Amsterdam, Alkmaar is just a short 20-30 minute train hop north, and has a beautiful little central village with windmill and surrounded by canals. It’s the home of the oldest cheese market in Europe so you know the cheese is amazing. We stayed in a hostel above a book store in one of the main lanes and it’s roomy and very inexpensive and the people who run it are lovely. You can see the huge steeple by the cheese market square and listen to its music across the rooftops. There’s a certifiably weird little ‘Beatles Museum’, I think the largest outside of the one in England. He also has obscure cds and records from other artists and is a font of Beatles trivia, which is interesting even from a statistical curiosity standpoint! We loved Alkmaar and would really like to go back. Have a great time!
Great tips Laurie! Thank you so much, though I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that you didn’t mention the statue of Menno Simons in Friesland. Surely that would have been the first place you went to?
Ha! You actually made me look that one up and read an entire Wikipedia entry for him, that rascal. I especially like that he eschewed asceticism (spelling test!) “in terms of its traditional practices of social withdrawal, mortification, and self-denial.” My kind of guy. I’m sure he ate lots of sugary things.
However, I think I would have to boycott his statue on this tidbit of information about how he viewed the union of man and woman: “Like the bride in the songs, the woman must come in total love and devotion and will be cleansed of her natural evil by contact with her husband. He did not alter the conventional view of relations between men and women but idealized the woman’s subordinate and asexual status.”
I could have guessed from that pointy beard of his.
Oh man! “…the woman must come in total love and devotion and will be cleansed of her natural evil by contact with her husband.” Menno said that? What a jerk.