Vacation, part 6

When you exit the Cologne train station, the massive Cologne Catherdral is to your left. Pictures do not do the structure justice:







You can pay and go up one of the towers. What they don't tell you is that the narrow staircase reaches halfway to Mars, tourist traffic flows both ways, there's no circulating air, and nobody wears deoderant.

Vacation, part 5

Blogger is being suspiciously cooperative, so I'm going to try and get a few more vacation pictures in today. I told you we weren't even close to being finished!

We took two day trips while we were in Amsterdam. One of them was to Cologne, Germany.

Here is the train station:
And the all butter-colored Mercedes taxi line outside the station:
I asked Kevin to take a picture of the quaint cobblestone street. As a bonus, he also captured the delivery truck, the locals having lunch and the old lady pulling up her support hose. Thanks, Ansel.
Our walk along the Rhine was noisy because it was being dredged.

Vacation, part 4

You thought I was done with the vacation photos? Not even close. I just took a break to give everything a chance to break down (internet, blogger, etc).

This is the Heineken Experience. It's housed in the old brewery, but they don't make beer there anymore. They tried to make up for the fact by creating a *fun* interactive tour, but I still liked our tour of the Red Hook Brewery in Woodinville, Washington better.

We took this small-car picture for Matthew.
After the Rijksmuseum and Heineken tours, we stumbled upon Hare Krishna "devotees" on our way home. Lots of chanting, not much else.
There is a very modern, trendy shopping mall in this old building. It's weird.
This is a houseboat with plants on it.

By the way, our phone is currently not working. It should get fixed today. My cell phone is on if you need to reach us.

It's a Girl

Kyla Grace was born on August 21. She's cute. Matthew is happy to have a new cousin.

Grandpa can't play favorites now. He must buy $1,483,096 worth of Barbies and Disney Princess junk so Kyla is all caught up with Matthew in the present department.

First Day of School

Sorry for the break. I had jury duty, then internet problems. And of course there's that whole life thing that keeps getting in the way.

Monday was the first day of school. Matthew says his teacher is "even nicer than she looks in her picture."

Vacation, part 3

This year was Rembrandt's 400th birthday. The country had a big party, but we missed it by two weeks. Fortunately, the Rijksmuseum has a few of his works.

Vermeer:

Here's the back side of the museum. Tourists are guided here due to renovation.

Here's the front that they don't want you to see. There is/are lots of graffiti in the city.
After leaving the museum, we stumbled into this park.

Vacation, part 2

We went to the Rijksmuseum, which was being renovated. They took all their most popular pieces and put them in a wing, so it was kind of like a "greatest hits" tour.



The museum grounds are an exhibit in themselves.

They had a good amount of Delft items, including these vases. This shape must have been all the rage at some point, because they had several pieces like this:

And the Delft violin:

Vacation, part 1

Sorry it has taken so long to start posting vacation pictures. Blogger and our computer haven't been getting along, and I've tried twice to get these up. Third time was the charm. We have over 400 pictures, so I'll pick out the greatest hits and post a few at a time.

Kevin's parents watched Matthew while we went to the Netherlands, with day trips to Germany and Belguim. He had fun. They had fun. We had fun. It was a winning situation all around.

Here is Centraal Station, where all the trains come and go in Amsterdam. The whole place is under construction, which you can see from the bottom of the photo:




This is a pretty canal across and diagonal from the train station. I'm too lazy to look up the name. Locals spend a lot of time at outdoor cafes. We got used to that.


Of course, we walked through the Red Light District. You're not supposed to take any pictures of the "workers," but I couldn't resist this one. No, we don't know what the demonstration video entails.


Here's another canal whose name I won't look up. The white stalls on the left are the flower market.


More flower market.





That's it for vacation installment #1. Matthew is on my case about using the computer.

Love That Horny Toad

Though this little snippet is funny, it's also alarmingly true. Thanks to the Texas public education system, Matthew does, in fact, know the state bird (mockingbird) but not the state tree (pecan):

Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy

Does anybody read this Howdy Houston thing? Comment if you do or email me, because nobody (except my mom) even indicates they read it. I am wondering if it's the best way to keep in touch with everyone.