Mega-Family Vacation - part 1

Last month we had a mega-family vacation, with parents coming from Rochester & Florida, and Courtney from Prague, all meeting up at an amazing hotel overlooking Lake Como! It was the first leg of a week-long trip that included three nights in Como, one night in Milan and four nights in Berlin (I also spent a few hours biking in Switzerland, sans passport). 

In Italy, we spent most of our time outdoors, enjoying the wonderful weather and amazing food, wine, and Coke Zero and a little bit of history/culture. The Lake Como area is known for having some world-class cycling routes, and I was able to enjoy a few of them via a bike I rented from a really nice guy at Lake Como Cycling.  The highlight of the trip was probably the private boat tour that covered the southwest fork of Lake Como, from Cernobbio to Villa del Belbianello.  

We took dozens of photos and none of them come close to capturing the beauty of the region, but here are a few.  

Overdue

I’ve been meaning to do a proper update on the blog for about 6 weeks (after my trip to Florida in early May). I’ll do that this weekend...I do have two photos from today that I’d like to share for posterity purposes:

 Photo 1: it’s been great living in a time zone that facilitates live World Cup viewing (and working for the primary sponsor of the World Cup). This afternoon I sat with some French colleagues to watch France beat Uruguay.  

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Photo 2: 4 person (typically 4-man) porta-potty’s. Have these things landed in the US yet? I think they make so much sense for large crowds: the footprint is the same size as a typical 1 person box. 

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Gezellig in Haarlem.

We spent Saturday in Haarlem, cruising the canals and experiencing some major Gezellig in our friends neighborhood.

The square near our friends place in Haarlem includes the Café De Vijfhoek.  Tyson is mounting the bike (far left) while Andrea and Natalie wait for the kids.  It's about as charming of a neighborhood as it gets.

Tyson, Captain Andrea, Natalie.

Weekend in Paris avec les Bergunds

Katy & Dave came to visit and the four of us spent the weekend in Paris.

Munich + Frozen Amsterdam

We spent last weekend in Munich, visiting our Canadian-American friends Jackie and Clint. It was our second trip to Germany, and our hosts did a great job of showing us the city and giving us a glimpse of what living in Germany is really like: orderly, no-nonsense, and a common understanding that everyone should speak German and clean their plate at dinner (I was experiencing a very rare phenomenon of diminished appetite and was repeatedly given questionable looks for not finishing my meal). 

We spent Friday in the Bavarian Alps (Clint and I skied at Garmisch-Classic while Jackie and Natalie explored the village and took a tram to the summit, thereby reaching the highest point in both Germany and Austria (the mountain range straddled the border between countries).  On Saturday we attended an FC Bayern München match and explored the city.

(some of the pictures taken by Jackie and Clint...Thanks!)

 

Friends from America (via Copenhagen)!

The past few weeks have been fairly quiet for us; we got out of the city one night (to Utrecht) and had some American friends visit for the weekend.  I also switched buildings at work that provides a slightly better view.

 

2017-18 Holiday Trifecta

Despite not being able to make it to Minnesota or Florida for the holidays, we had a busy few weeks: a few days with Natalie's family in San Diego for Christmas, New Year's in Valencia and back to dreary Amsterdam for Phil's birthday (and work, Dutch lessons, etc.).

Highlights Included: 

  • Seeing family and friends in San Diego. 
  • Seeing the sun in San Diego.
  • Seeing the sun in Valencia.
  • Mountain biking in San Diego AND Valencia (Phil).
  • Trying Chipotle's queso for the first time (Qdoba's is much better).
  • Experiencing New Year's Eve with a large group of Spanish people (& a few Dutch) and partaking in Las doce uvas de la suerte tradition ("12 Grapes of Luck").

 

Honeymoon in Tokyo

It has been a very busy fall/winter, and I still have a bit of jet lag, so this post will be shrt and swt.  We had a great time in Tokyo and we are really hoping to return someday (we are holding onto our SIM cards and PassMo's).  Spending 6 nights in Tokyo only allowed us to scratch the surface of all the sights (Mt. Fuji), restaurants (ramen, sushi, pizza, Shake Shack), wonderful people and unique experiences (cat cafes, shopping, etc.); we spent 3 nights at a swank hotel in the immaculate Roppongi/midtown neighborhood and 3 nights in a less-touristy neighborhood called Daikanyamacho (just south of uber-crowded Shibuya).  [*the hotel was the second tallest building in Tokyo and I took A LOT of photos of Mt. Fuji from our room on the 48th floor]

Dutch Lunch

Sometimes the canteen has some odd food (at least to my American palate); and eating warm food for lunch (or breakfast) is almost unimaginable for most Dutchies. Thankfully today they included a deep fried cheese thing and some tubular meat to go with my yogurt and bread. 

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Foggy commute

A brisk but scenic commute for Phil this morning along the Amstel River.  

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A few days in Northern Spain

We recently spent a few days in Spain with my parents and had a great time touring around Bilbao, La Rioja and Basque Country. Bilbao is a great, modern city with delicious food and an amazing museum (which we stayed across the street from); we ate some nice Pintxos at a bar called Cafe Estoril, which is owned by my colleague's dad.  We had an amazing wine + architecture in the Rioja region that included lunch in a cave under the Castillo de San Vicente de la Sonsierra (which our guide informed us was featured in a recent episode of The Bachelorette).  We spent the final two days relaxing in San Sebastian.

Natalie's parents came to visit after our trip to Spain....We just realized that we didn't take any pictures with them!  

Courtney in town, missed polo match and a few objet d'art

Courtney, aka visitor #2, stopped by for the weekend on her from Prague to Seattle. It was last weekend (23/24 of Sept), and I can't remember exactly what she said, but I think she said it was the best weekend of her life?  Regardless, we had a very nice weekend showing her around, including a nice bike ride along the Amstel River to the Kek Brewery in the town of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel.  

Tonight (Oct 1st) we had plans to watch a polo match in the museumplein...But I misread the schedule and unfortunately we didn't missed the last match. Thankfully there was an oliebollen truck nearby, so I got two deep fried balls of dough with powdered sugar to make up for it (I ate them both).

 

A few miscellaneous shots from around town.

Natalie's new gig

Natalie started her new job today! 

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We took the metro together (the Intralox office is only a few blocks from adidas).  

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47 hours in London

I (Phil) was in London for almost two days for a conference: lowlight of the trip was arriving at my hotel in Knightsbridge at 23:00 to discover my hotel reservation had been canceled (and subsequently trying to find a place that wasn't £400/night). Highlight is tied between the cool stuff I learned at the conference and the Shake Shack cheese fries (didn't have time for a proper meal - I got there after dinner with colleagues about 10 min before closing).  I forgot how huge London is: it took me 85 minutes to get from the East side to Heathrow in the tube; my flight to AMS is about 50 minutes. 

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Thames, etc. from the bike path.  

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Vegetarian dessert. 

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That's what the conference looked like.  

Weekend in Basel

We just got back from a quick but fun weekend trip to Basel, Switzerland.  A few take-aways from the trip:

  • Switzerland is expensive (they aren't on the Euro).
  • Natalie enjoys eating liver.
  • Soft pretzels are appropriate with any meal.
  • You should always bring your passport when you cross international lines (the Basel metro area spans Switzerland, France and Germany).  

We had 3 main stops: 

  1. The Vitra Design Museum which was super cool. The Vitra company builds high-end/designer furniture and their production/assembly campus includes buildings by multiple Pritzker winning architects. 
  2. Blindekuh (dinner in the dark): a restaurant that started in Zurich as a way to employ people with vision problems. We opted for the "dinner for two" option which mean we sat in a room that was pitch black and ate four courses of complete surprises (everything except the wine); there was absolutely no light: anything that could give off light (phones, watches, etc.) had to be left in a locker outside the dinning room.  It was great experience and made us both very thankful to have our vision. The food was pretty good too.
  3. The Basler Papiermühle: the Swiss Museum of Paper, Writing and Printing was highly ranked on Tripadvisor and lived up to it's expectations. The building containing the museum was built over 500 years ago and houses loads of interesting machines, tools and information about all things related to the creation of paper (e.g. how it used to be made out of old rags), type-setting, and book-binding.

Arbeitsreise nach Herzogenaurach Deutschland

I (Phil) recently traveled to Herzogenaurach, Germany for a few days of meetings and onboarding at the Adidas HQ campus.  "Herzo" is a small, sleepy village where Adidas and Puma got there start about 70 years ago.  It was neat to see the Adidas campus (which is partially made up of an old US army base) where about 4,000 people work.  Also, I had my first ride on the autobahn and the driver hit 168 kmh.  Here are some pictures. 

Our first guest.

Natalie and I had our first* guest last weekend! (*excluding our Dutch instructor who visits twice a week)! Clint P., the Canuck, came to visit from Munich while his wife was back in the U.S.  We had such a great time with activities that we only managed to take one group picture (we were so busy that we were blissfully unaware of all the terrible things happening in Charlottesville).

I included a bonus picture from my foggy bike ride to work. 

 

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At a beer, food and music festival in Amsterdam Noord.  

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Along the Amstel river.