So I am copying and pasting here so you can SAY you've read it but you don't have to read the whole thing.
G'day!
(Yes - starting to miss Australianisms...)
We are currently in Amsterdam, and having a great time. This city is amazing - great architecture, insane amount of bikes... the cars actually look out of place. And it is relatively quiet for a city centre too ... I guess less honking = less noise pollution.
We have been so lucky with the weather our whole trip. Apparently when we landed in Hawaii we just missed a week's worth of rain thanks to some storm systems. As you probably saw in the Facebook pictures, the weather there was so typically "dream island beach getaway" it was ridiculous.
Then we landed in Seattle, where we were too late to experience the joys of rain and wind storms.. so we had very little rain there despite the city's reputation.
As you probably all know, we loved Seattle. It is a wonderful city that isn't too tourist-geared. Plus Americans don't seem to realise how cheap everything is over there... We shopped up a storm (mainly due to the need to get proper cold-weather stuff... as opposed to the Brisbane version which is all "oh look this is totally for winter because it has a full sleeve!!")
Victoria was great - despite the weather being a bit annoying on the trip up: we had to take a bus rather than the planned ferry because the sea was a tad rough (7 feet waves). When we got to Victoria though, the weather was lovely! Sun and everything.
Unfortunately N got a cold, and that meant we didn't explore the city as much as we could have, but what is a holiday for if not for lying about and being all leisurely for a while (even if one of us was suffering a little)?
We really enjoyed the friendliness of both the Americans and the Canadians - the customer service emphasis is great, even if it is motivated by tips... and the people in general were very friendly. In the US I wasn't sure if that was a mixture of genuine friendliness + amusement at our "adorable" accents.
Speaking of which, in America I've never felt so self-conscious about my accent. I don't know if many of you know this but I get really frustrated when I have to repeat myself - and apparently I'm too quiet (don't laugh A Foo!!) and my "o"s are too "o" and not enough "a" for American ears.
Luckily, when we came back from Canada, we went up to visit our friends in Puyallup - and they are already used to hearing our dulcet tones over Ventrilo (kind of like video-less skype mostly used to talk whilst gaming for those of you who are super geeks). We were picked up by our friend Chuck, who was in his army gear still after doing something in the AM. It was a trip, as it always is, to meet this person who we've only heard for so long.
Chuck is a great guy, and we were really glad he picked us up because Seattle provided a bit of its famed rain that day. On our way back to his place on Base, he talked to us about his time deployed (a lot of which was crazy to my ears... full on) and attempting to get back to life despite on-going issues from being "blown up"... yeesh!
We met Chuck's wife Hannah and their two children Raelynne and Archer. Raelynne is ADORABLE. She is only 3 1/2 so her speech isn't always in the right order. As Chuck said, its like listening to yoda sometimes - the words are all there, just not necessarily in the right order or tense.
Later we went to lunch with some more people who we've spent too many hours with interacting via computers. I'd not met Josh the last time we visited in 2011, so that was great (he's a giant, but super nice), and our friends Trevor and Brandon joined us too.
This was the 31st of October too, by the way - so we all went back to Trevor's place to get ready to trick or treat (!!!!) with Trevor's wife Jess and their two daughters Teighlor and Kylene. Chuck and Hannah also came along with their kids: Raelynne was dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and was so cute, as was her little brother who was put in a lion onesie which was freaking awesome.
Anyway - you've probably seen the pictures on facebook - we had a great time!! It was COLD, but I didn't care. At Trevor's uncle's place (where they had a haunted house thing going on, which apprently attracted over 1500 visitors!) they gave us free hot coffee so that kept us going and relatively unfrozen.
The next week was great. Again, if you've followed us on fb you've seen we went to a Halloween party on Saturday night (lots of fun... there was a "fear factor" table where you could eat gross sounding things, and actual gross things, such as a live goldfish. Which people did. I didn't watch.) We also went to our friends' Aunt & Uncle's place on Sunday for a Sunday Football gathering where we ate mac & cheese (cooked especially for me as they couldn't think of anything else vegetarian) and watched the Seahawks win against the Raiders.
Unfortunately the next two days were a little bit crap because I succumbed to a cold, but some highlights include drinking Pumpkin Spike Lattes whenever I could (because why don't we have that in Aus?? They're DELICIOUS) and going with Jess to Costco. I know, I know. But it was FUN. So much stuff!! You can buy eggs like 50 at a time...
Eventually our time was up - we were given a ride to the airport for our (delayed) flight to London, and then - London! We checked into our (tiny) hotel room, and set off to meet up with our school friend Michael Hahn (known by his last name to us) by the Tower of London. The poppies were beautiful, and there weren't too many people there (from what I gather there had been so many people there on the weekend that tour buses couldn't even stop to let people off).
But what was better was walking through the back streets with Hahn and his girlfriend Claire, seeing old buildings, avoiding the crowds and finding a pub to drink in and then crossing the river (via Tower Bridge) to a pub to eat in. It was Guy Fawkes night too - so there were some fireworks across the city. Really it was a fun night - it must have been, since we were a little jet-lagged and I was still a bit coldy, and yet we stayed out til after 10pm (right? party animals!)
We didn't really give London a chance, and as usual I didn't really like it. I DID like the underground system though. Very easy to navigate... even for us. I regretted not giving the city at least another day, and meeting up with some old friends who lived nearby... but before I knew it we were off to Glasgow via Gatwick airport.
In the interests in keeping this email from becoming a novel... I'll reduce our tour through Scotland to summarising: oh my god the scenery! Beautiful buildings, villages, deer, eagles, seals, mountains, ocean, moss, trees... holy god. And speaking of god, the Isle of Iona was amazing... we happened to be there on the Sunday before Remembrance Day, so there was a bag-piper on the same ferry as us going over to play at the ceremony. Swear to god. Kilt and all.
All in all we went from Glasgow to Loch Lomond to Oban, to Kilmartin to Fionnphort to Tobermory to Mallaig to Portree to Kyleakin to Uig to Talisker Distillery, then back across the Skye Bridge to Fort William to Crianlarich to Edinburgh and finally to Newcastle via a stop at Hadrian's wall and Vindolanda.
Phewff. From Newcastle we caught a boat across to Amsterdam overnight, and here we are. I LOVE Amsterdam. Yes people talk about the ladies in the windows and the coffeehouses and all that... but so far my favourite things have been 1) CHEESE... cheese samples and CHEESE; and 2) the Van Gogh Museum.
Ugh. The Van Gogh Museum was unbelievable. I was so excited to see his work up close, that when we got to the first wall with his early paintings - that are all dark and focusing on the earthy lives of peasants - I was grinning like an idiot. Yes, I made N laugh at me.
Then, when we got to see one of his self portraits (Self Portrait in a Felt Hat), I had to hold back tears. Yes - I'm a geek. But I don't care. His work was at once so much part of a movement in terms of technique and colour, yet at the same time he was so incredibly different. His colours, the movement, the way when you look closely you don't see careful placement - you see energy, you see exactly where the brush went. Faces aren't perfect, straight lines aren't straight, but you don't care.
I was saying to N (who politely nodded) that his work, compared to others at the time and compared to many other of the "great" artists prior, was open. You are not kept at bay from the subject matter, from the piece - you are drawn in. You want to see the glob of paint. Your eyes are drawn from line to colour to line to colour. Shadows are not dark, but azure.
In his later work, we saw a landscape, painted the year of his death, and after his time in an asylum - which was striking to me because it seemed like he finally came back to using black. It is called Landscape at Twilight. It is so striking, because it is basically two trees silhouetted against this brilliant, vibrantly golden yellow sunset sky. I don't want to go on about what it means or what it means to me, but yes - geeky Manda tear up time again.
(Ok. Gosh. This has become rather longer than I expected... I think I'm going to just paste this into a blog post and those who can be bothered can read it.)
Anyway, today has been a lazy day. We've been enjoying our beautiful apartment here in Amsterdam's outskirts. We are heading out shortly to see Rembrandt's house, and whatever else we come across on the way, and then tomorrow N wants to take me somewhere inappropriate (we'll see) and I want to go to the Rijksmuseum. Maybe a canal tour? Who knows...
Then onward for the final 2 stages of our trip - Lübeck then Singapore, before home on the morning of the 29th of Nov.
I've thought of all of you often, and really look forward to seeing you again when I get back. Can't believe it will be essentially Christmas when I get back... hoorah!
Looking forward to catching up and hearing some beautiful Aussie accents once more.
Love to you all!
x
Amanda
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