20221019 Amandelbloesem

I guess you’re old when instead of buying a souvenir print or T-shirt, you buy souvenir reading glasses.

It’s Fiona’s last day here. She flies back to Scotland tomorrow. This morning Abi, Fiona, and I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and in the afternoon we did the “Top Secret” escape room at Game Over. The escape room was hard but good. Nice theme, well decorated. I felt that a couple of the puzzles could have been better signposted, but the staff did warn us that it was going to be difficult!

The Van Gogh Museum was amazing. Earlier this year we would like to have visited it with Kenny and Judy when they were in town, but tickets were all sold out. A few years ago I almost got to visit it, but a tourist collapsed and hit his head just in front of us in the queue, and I ended up accompanying him to hospital because he was probably concussed and didn’t speak any Dutch. So after living here for over 15 years now, this was my first time there.

Not only are the works on display a fantastic collection, but the story the museum tells about his life is brilliantly executed. Definitely recommended.

On one of the floors, a staff member was handing out paper for visitors to use if they wanted to do some drawing themselves. On the third floor there was a small exhibit of a rabbit and a painting of a rabbit. Fiona took a rest nearby and did a quick but to my eyes amazing 10-minute sketch of the rabbit. Vivid and lifelike. She doesn’t often show us her work, and so I’m always surprised and blown away by her skill.

20221018 Leaving an impression

The builders only took a couple of hours to cover the under-floor heating pipes with concrete. Solo only took a moment to escape from the bedroom and race downstairs to make his mark. Fortunately he only took a couple of leaps before jumping off, perhaps surprised at the texture of the surface.

The concrete firmed up during the course of the day, and eventually it was solid enough that we felt we could let the boys out without them doing more damage to it.

Not too worried about the paw print. It’ll be covered by tiles soon enough, though as Abi says, we’ll always know it’s there.

20221014 Metrocard

I finally got around to doing my expenses for the trip to New York in September. I took the subway and PATH trains a lot while I was there. The company’s expenses policy allows us to take a taxi from the airport, but I prefer public transport. Public transport around New York city is pretty good.