Misc.

I guess we've been kind of busy lately. Ross has been working on his typeface day and night, and I don't really know what I've been doing exactly, but clearly not blogging. I still don't have anything to say, but thought I'd post some photos from the last couple weeks.

A tourist shop in Amsterdam:

A park in The Hague:



Zebedus, my favourite café in The Hague. It's part of an old church that is, in my opinion, the best place to have lunch on a Saturday.

They have the best cappuccino.

Scheveningen

A performance I watched the other night.


A typical Dutch snackbar, selling deep fried snacks, herring and patats (fries).

Last night's sunset over the canal at the end of our street.

That's all.

Ceci n'est pas...

These are not green grapes; in this country they are white grapes. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense since the wine made from these grapes is white and not green. Red grapes are still called red grapes. But you know black grapes? They're really dark and juicy, and the same colour of blueberries? Well, here they're called blue grapes, which again makes sense since I just said they're the same colour as blueberries.

Anyway ... Ross is very busy right now so he hasn't posted about this really cool workshop that he went to a couple days ago. Keith Tam, another of our former professors from Emily Carr who is now teaching in Hong Kong, also is currently touring some students around this part of the world. His students along with Ross' class gathered at Scheveningen to participate in a workshop hosted by Underware, which is a major type design studio in The Hague.

Their mission was to carve the phrase "I know what I know" into the sand in both English and Chinese script into the sand in characters about one meter high. The results are very cool. Unfortunatly he forgot his camera, but Underware's documentation of the project can be found here (it's called Sandman), and I recommend checking it out, as well as the documentation of the other workshops they've hosted, too.

Scheveningen

It's like summer here. The days are really hot, and the nights are warm and the beach is popular.



At Scheveningen, there's a long strip of tacky restaurants that all have the strangest names. Many of them suggest a that Scheveningen is in the tropics. Although the beach is huge and beautiful, the water is still the North Sea. The beach might be packed, but no one is swimming.

Here's some of the best:

Copacabana

Mambo
Cocomo

Buena Vista

Bora Bora

La Bamba


El Niño


Blue Lagoon

And my favourite riduculous restaurant name, BooNooNooNoos



We went back to Scheveningen as the sun was setting for a little BBQ with Ross' classmates.




It was real nice. The last time we were at a beach party was a going away shindig for us in Vancouver, and the cops came by and poured out everyone's booze and put out fires. I prefer this much, much better.

Like a Record, Baby

. . . or maybe more like a revolving door.

Graham and Laura left Holland for London on Thursday morning, and immediately after saying goodbye, Ross boarded a train to Amsterdam and met up with some other familiar faces. I joined later on, after work. This is what happens when you move to a foreign country; you become very popular!


First, Laura & Graham: The remainder of their holiday consisted of using our apartment as base and making day trips to different parts of the country. They even went to a few places that Ross & I haven't been yet, like Haarlem and Dordrecht (where Graham's father was born.) In the evenings when I was finished work and Ross was finished school we'd hang out on as many patios as possible.

This is precisely why I think Holland is such a great place to visit. There is so much to see in such a small area, (big-little country) that you don't spend a lot of time getting around, and day trips are cheap and fast.



They had a great time, as did we. We even persuaded the non-beer drinking Graham to have a Belgian beer. Is it still considered peer pressure if you know it's for the best?


And then on to the other travelers:
Our former Emily Carr profs Clément Vincent and Paul Mazzucca are currently leading a gathering of ECI (oops, I mean ECU) around on a Euro-trip. They started in Amsterdam and are working their way south to end in Paris. Aside from Clément, Paul and Paul's wife Caroline, Ginger and Chloe were the other familiar faces in the crowd

We went for very good Indonesian, and otherwise just hung out for the day. Fun, fun.

Laura & Graham Go Dutch

Ross' sister Laura and her boyfriend Graham are currently visiting us. They were supposed to be here for the Queen's Day mayhem, but due to a hiccup in their plans they arrived one day later than planned. But we've been able to make up for lost time and there's been no shortage of activities.



The four of us stayed in Amsterdam this weekend (it was cleaned up) and did all the usual wonderful Amsterdam stuff. The weather was so warm and it seemed as though the whole city was just hanging out and enjoying the weather.

The best thing we did was rent bikes and hop a ferry to North Amsterdam and cycle through the Waterland area for the day.


The Waterland area took us through about 40 kilometers of old towns, along beautiful dikes and we finished the loop six hours later through pristine farmland.











Every moment was perfect. The scenery was breathtaking and the weather was gorgeous. It was a truly memorable day for all of us.