Posts by blinkin2000

Maker Faire

Maker Faire

So we had quite a collection of experiences today. We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. Andrew had a full English breakfast and I had poached eggs with homemade English muffins. Yes, they actually did call them “English” muffins on the menu. A little redundant if you ask me. Anyway, then it was off to fix a quick train ticket mishap and on to Maker Faire which is part of the Newcastle Science Festival.

What fun! They had everything from a giant fire-breathing robot dragon to remote controlled trash cans named Sid and Nancy to DIY electrical kits to music made using Tessla coils. Andrew was in seventh heaven. They also do this strange thing called yarn bombing as part of the festival which is basically where people knit items and vandalize public spaces with them. For example, one person knit a seat warmer for a public bench and another thought a tree sweater would be a nice contribution. Who knew knitters here are such rebels? After spending all morning at Maker Faire we had lunch at a little noodle house which was surprisingly good seeing as though there isn’t a large population of Asians living here as far as we can tell.

By the time we were done with lunch it was about 4:00 p.m. and we went back to the hotel for a little R&R to rest up for an evening concert and seminar on creating music using brainwaves. It was pretty interesting although a little anti-climactic since the guy just stands there with a headset thinking about music while a computer outputs sounds. It was an amazing scientific feat, but the entertainment factor could have been amped up. The best part about the evening was the walk to the concert hall. The river and bridges here are really beautiful! I promise to post pictures tomorrow as we have no wi-fi at our hotel so there is no way to get the pictures onto the blog. I am currently posting this from Mickey’s iPad. Our hotel tomorrow night has it so I will update this post then. Andrew took some really beautiful ones of the Newcastle Bridge that I can’t wait to share. Because we had a late lunch and were pretty beat by the time the concert ended, we decided to forgo dinner and just eat some snacks we brought. At the time I’m writing this, Andrew is already sleeping. Hope everyone is well at home. Cheers, Chelsie and Andrew

UPDATE…The photos are here!

Inside the Sage Gateshead where we saw Brainwave. It was a beautiful theatre. Note the pink guy with no pants. He was waaaaaay underdressed.

Maker Faire

Tree Sweater Yarn Bomb (Those hooligan knitters!)

Fire-breathing dragon.

The night skyline from Millenium Bridge. You may recognize the bridge from the bottle label of Newcastle Ale.

The outside of the Sage Gateshead where we saw Brainwave.

Fire-breathing dragon head shot

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We’ve arrived!

Hello everyone! Although today was mostly full of travel, it was a good one. Our plane left LAX a half hour late which wasn’t too bad. (Thanks Dad/Steve for dropping us off at the airport!) Andrew surprised me with an upgrade to extra legroom seats which turns out was totally worth it. We had at least 4 inches more legroom than the other seats in economy and they leaned back further too. We ate dinner on the airplane at around 10 p.m. LA time and then settled in to watch movies. I started The King’s Speech which was great, but fell asleep half-way through and stayed that way pretty much the rest of the flight. Andrew watched Due Date which was apparently pretty funny because I saw him many times out of the corner of my eye having quiet fits of laughter.

In London we got through customs no problem and arrived to Mickey’s around 6 p.m. We ate dinner at a very nice gastro pub near their place called The Fellow. Andrew had perfectly cooked Venison with haggis and “neeps and tatties” which are mashed turnips and potatoes. I had some amazing fish and chips with smushed peas. Wow, everything was really good.

Next we were off to the train station to take the last train to Newcastle which is in Northern England. We took off from track 8 at King’s Cross station which as you Harry Potter fans know is really close to platform nine and three quarters (the gateway to Hogwart’s Express) Andrew even pretended to run into the wall where the made-up platform was supposed to be like Harry does in the book, but didn’t get through. Muggle! Ok enough Harry Potter references. I’m reading the books right now so I just couldn’t resist. We arrived a little after midnight and decided to walk to our hotel a few blocks away. We all assumed that since it was so late, it would be a pretty deserted trek. We couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as we exited the train station, we were assaulted by the sights and sounds of thousands of young people partying the night away. They were everywhere…in the street, inside noisy pubs, stumbling around the sidewalks. A good many of them were way too intoxicated for their own good. With a little luck we finally got to our hotel and checked in for the night. Sorry we don’t have pictures to go with this post as Andrew didn’t have time to take any with all the travelling going on. Tomorrow we are headed to Maker’s Faire, a fun hands-on science festival here in Newcastle and I’m sure we will get plenty of pictures of that. Thanks for all the well wishes. We wish you could all be here with us. Cheers, Chelsie and Andrew

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Back to our First Hotel, Amsterdam in the Rain, Private Canal Tour, Even More Indo Food

Back to our First Hotel, Amsterdam in the Rain, Private Canal Tour, Even More Indo Food

Andrew gave me his cold and it is now in full swing. I woke up this morning with a raging sore throat and had a hard time getting up. Because of this and the fact we were up late last night making travel arrangements, we slept in until 11:00 a.m. and then packed up. We enjoyed our first hotel and its location so much that we decided to move back there for our last night in Amsterdam. We also wanted to take advantage of their private boat for a little canal tour. In other news, our luggage is getting pretty tight with all the stuff we bought plus we have a small box waiting for us in London as well. We will see how it goes, but we may need to buy another bag to get everything home. At around noon, we took a cab back to our original hotel and checked in. The room wasn’t ready yet so we walked to a little Indonesian restaurant that was serving lunch. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it really hit the spot. Especially since it is cold and rainy outside.

Ignoring the rain we decided to do a little more shopping on one of the main streets. It was pretty much an area that had all the brand name stores we have at home so we didn’t end up buying anything, but we did get soaking wet because of all the rain. Oh well, a little water never hurt anyone right? We also visited this really cool vintage shop that has an awesome leather weekend bag I am thinking of buying to lug all our souvenirs home in. We will see.

After our little shopping trip we had coffee in the hotel lounge while they put the finishing touches on our room. This one is even better than our first room here. It’s huge with a second floor bathroom suite. Nice! After we scoped it out it was time for our private canal cruise. The boat was a little bit late picking us up because it was having some technical difficulties, but when it arrived it was just beautiful and our captain Nico was really great. He gave us information about the canal houses and lots of history on Amsterdam. He even took us out into the open harbor. It was a perfect way to spend our last night here. After the boat ride was over we broke our cardinal vacation rule and ate at the same place twice. We enjoyed Blauw so much two nights ago that we couldn’t resist another meal there. We even discussed it with the concierge, but he agreed that if we liked it that much then we should go back as they don’t have many other modern Indonesian restaurants in town.  They even remembered us and gave us the same table. This time we tried the 20 plate rice table which is basically 20 small dishes of all kinds of different things. There was gado gado (peanutty slaw), two kinds of sate, two fish dishes, two beef dishes, a pork dish, my favorite coconut shavings and lots of other things as well. We were stuffed at the end of it all, but Andrew still made sure to save room for the cendol dessert. We took a taxi back to the hotel and now we are preparing for an early morning. Tomorrow we get on the train to spend one more night in London before heading home on Wednesday. Tomtom, our London coffee shop, is calling Andrew’s name. Au revior, Chelsie and Andrew

Our last hotel in Amsterdam

Our bathroom

Ready for the private canal tour

Our boat "Kleijn Amsterdam" and Nico

View from the boat in the open harbor...and look, a huge floating Chinese restaurant

The canals from the boat at night

Thanks for taking our picture Nico

The "rice table" at Blauw

Blauw has the biggest mints in existence. Andrew likened them to bleach toilet tabs

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Waffles, Van Gogh Museum, Pea Soup, Flower Market, Shopping

Waffles, Van Gogh Museum, Pea Soup, Flower Market, Shopping

Sorry about the late blog post. We are having such a wonderful time here in Amsterdam that we have decided to extend our stay until Tuesday and then head back to London for one night instead of going to Brussels. Last night I couldn’t post because I spent the time rearranging our train tickets and hotels. Overall we had a really great day…maybe our best yet. We woke up a little later (around 10ish) and walked down to Museumplein which is the area of town that houses most of the museums. We were pretty hungry at that point so we perused the carts that had setup shop along the park. One of them was selling waffles and that did it for me. I had the waffle with cherries and Andrew had the waffle with chocolate sauce. Both were piping hot having just come out of the waffle iron and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Mom, I thought of you because I know waffles are your favorite. It really hit the spot and we were off to the Van Gogh museum. We pre-bought our tickets from our last hotel so we go to cut the line and go right in. What an amazing experience. You can’t really get a full appreciation of Van Gogh’s work unless you are right there looking at the actual brush strokes. Plus we learned a lot about his motivations and tumultuous life that also gave us a deeper appreciation of his art. Overall it was a great experience and we didn’t regret it one bit.

After that we walked a while to the flower market which is setup on permanent barges along one of the canals. It was so beautiful. They had all kinds of fresh flowers. Some we had seen before and others that we had not. They also had hundreds of varieties of tulips bulbs for sale of all colors, shapes, and sizes. We even saw jet-black tulips. By this time we were getting hungry for lunch so we stepped inside a small cafe that was advertising fresh Dutch pea soup. We ordered a bowl along with some fluffy UFO-shaped pancakes. Both were delicious. The pea soup was great. It was more like a pea stew though with carrots and potatoes. After that we shopped in lots of the the little boutiques that lined the streets. We found some great stuff and I’m just hoping it will all fit into our luggage on the way home.

After all the shopping we walked about a mile back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. When we first got here I had the concierge make us a reservation at Fifteen Amsterdam, a restaurant owned by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. It was all the way over by the train station we came in on so we had to take a taxi. It was a beautiful restaurant inside…part graffiti art part modern high fashion. When we first arrived they couldn’t find our reservation, but that was quickly resolved and we were seated. As a snack, the chef made for us chickpea fritters with a saffron mayonnaise. For starters I ordered the sweet corn soup with chicken liver pate and Andrew had mozzarella with pesto and roasted pumpkin. Both were great, but I liked my soup better. For our entrees Andrew had the venison and I had the gnocchi with red pepper broth. We finished everything off with an amazing chocolate tart. Everything was wonderful except the sour cream-like whipped topping on the tart. It was almost like whipped cream made out of buttermilk. I thought it was okay, but Andrew promptly pushed it off to the side of the plate. Buttermilk in general isn’t that uncommon here. One morning Andrew was given it instead of cream for his coffee. He had to make up for it with lots of sugar. :) Our trip is coming to an end soon and we will be home before you know it. Thanks for following our adventures on the blog. We miss you all. Au revior, Chelsie and Andrew

P.S. Andrew says I look very Dutch after seeing all the people here.

Waffles!!!!!

A random Kimodo Dragon installation in one of the parks we walked by

Wooden shoes for sale in a shop. People were actually trying them on get the right fit. Really??? I don't have a single outfit to go with those.

Flowers for sale at the floating flower market

Bouquets for sale at the flower market

Another canal, they are all so beautiful

Food vending machine with dutch croquettes

Andrew in front of the I am Amsterdam iconic sign

Ready to eat at Fifteen

Inside Fifteen Amsterdam, Jamie Oliver's restaurant

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