Category Archives: Travel

Katwijk aan Zee

We made it to Katwijk aan Zee by taking a train to Leiden and then a bus to the coast. We got our rooms in a nice hotel with an ocean view. We went for a walk along the sea. It has been quite windy here and cooler weather than we had before.

The next day we went to The Hague by bus. We were now with Erin’s uncle and his girlfriend. We went to Scheveningen which is a beach/touristy area. We then slowly tried to find our way to Erin’s grandparents old house. After many wrong trains, walking, etc we found it and made our way back much easier.

Today Erin wasn’t feeling well so we took a day off and have just rested in the hotel.

I have added some pictures to:
http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands/
And added a new gallery:
http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands-2/

Utrecht

We managed to make it to Utrecht and found our hostel. Streets are always fun to find and when you have a big backpack on it gets even more fun.

In Maastricht we did do the canal cruise which we weren’t overly impressed with but did another cave/tunnel tour in a different spot and it was excellent! The guide got to do the tour in English because there was only a couple from Quebec, us and a guy from Malaysia who lived in Australia. The guide did a great job and had a lot to say.

After the tour we took the train to Utrecht. Utrecht is more like Amsterdam with lots of pedestrians, bicycles and cars everywhere. It has lots of neat architecture. We hope to climb a tower tomorrow. Today we took a bus to an Air force museum. It had many airplanes and helicopters and all were used in the Netherlands in one way.

Tomorrow in the afternoon we head to Katwijk aan Zee to meet Erin’s uncle, his girlfriend and his cousin.
More pictures to come when I get a chance.

Maastricht

On Sunday we left Amsterdam and took a train ride to Maastricht. It is about a 2.5 hour train ride to the South East of Holland. It is in between Belgium and Germany. It is a very nice city and is very slow paced compared to the fast pace of Amsterdam. During the train ride we were in the wrong half of the train and it was splitting so at one stop we had to quickly run to the right part of the train and just made it in time.

With Erin I hand-washed my laundry. The hostel had no laundry and we didn’t see any laundromats nearby. We have walked around town a lot, it has old fortress walls in various places, canals and a river. It is quite neat.

On Monday we did a guided tour of a cave/tunnel near Fort Sint Pietersburg. The guide was very good and nice. It was mostly in Dutch but sometimes in English for us. It was a really neat cave. Basically everywhere the ceiling was above my head. (Not above the heads of all the Dutch) We also did a walk around the area and it is picturesque with rolling hills, little farms, forests and water.

Today we rented bikes and biked out to the Belgian town called Neer Kanne, we decided to bike a bit further and went to Lanaye where we ate at the Le Petit Grande and I had a sandwich that had smoked salmon, smoked shrimp, hard boiled eggs, ham and cheese on it. After finding our way back we went to the museum, Bonnefatenan, it has lots of mostly dutch art in a huge building. It was quite neat and had lots to read in pamphlets. I think they switch up the art fairly regularly there.

We leave for Utrecht tomorrow and will hopefully do a canal cruise in Maastricht before we leave.

Amsterdam Part 2

On our second last day in Amsterdam we went on an hour long canal cruise that was a good way to see different parts of the city and get a little background on some stuff. There was a recording in Dutch, English and German. In the afternoon we went to the Anne Frank House. It was very well put together and had lots of info and original diary’s but was sad too.

On that Saturday for supper we had dutch pancakes. Which are quite large and thin compared to our pancakes and we chose to have apple and cinnamon on them. Very tasty. I have been having beer with a lot of my meals as it is around the same price as other drinks.

Amsterdam

My flights all went smoothly and early Wednesday morning a tired me was greeted by a tired Erin. It was really good to see her again. We planned what we wanted to do that day. Our first order of business was to get a train from the airport to Amsterdam Central. The airport has a train station that many trains go through, it took us a while to find the right train on the right track but we did eventually. We then found a tram, got off at the right spot and made it to our hostel. We have a nice 2 bed hostel room to ourselves and it has been fairly quiet.

Since we were pretty tired we walked around the central area, looking at all the different things to see and taking photos. It is so green and lots of flowers everywhere. We managed to stay up for the May 4 remembrance day ceremony at Dam Square. It was neat too see but all in Dutch! We stayed up for a bit longer before collapsing into our beds.

On Thursday May 5 we went to the Artis zoo. We had a perfect day for it, cool but not too cool and not too hot. We took lots of pictures and had fun. We even got to take a survey about our experience at the zoo when we were done.

Friday we went to the Rijkmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. No pictures were allowed in them but there was some quite interesting paintings in them.

I hope to get some pictures up later but not sure when. That is all for now. More to come later!

To Holland I go!

Well I get to go on vacation again. One more day of work then I am off to Holland on Tuesday. I am going with Erin and we will be there for close to 3 weeks. I look forward a lot to the trip and seeing Erin again. I will update my blog with what I have been up to and pictures when I can upload them.

Banff and Canmore

On Sunday Dec.19 Erin and I drove to Canmore for a couple of nights to see the mountains and do some skiing. We stayed at the Falcon Crest Lodge and had a nice room that even had a full kitchen for us to use.

After we arrived in Canmore we did some grocery shopping. We bought food for supper for another day and lunch when we were skiing and some breakfast food. For the evening we watched the Get Smart movie which we borrowed from the hotel.

We had planned on cross country skiing on Monday but it was quite cold out and the weather looked better on Tuesday so we decided to do some sightseeing instead. We drove up to Lake Louise and stopped for lunch at a little sandwich stop nearby. Lake Louise looked quite nice but it was very cold. We basically just walked to the lake took a few photos and got back in the car. Next on our list was the Banff Gondola. We drove to the gondola and it felt much nicer there. Inside the gondola was quite cool but when we were up at the top, the sun was out and it was warm enough to walk around a bit. We made it to the top of the boardwalk and had very nice views of the mountains. After driving back to our hotel we had a supper of pizza, salad and wine that we bought the day before. To rest in the evening we borrowed Battlestar Galactica Razor and enjoyed it.

On Tuesday the weather was much better so we made up some sandwiches and fruit for lunch and got ready to ski. We went to the Canmore Nordic Centre. We also rented our skiis from there. It was basically the first time I had gone cross country skiing. It was a lot of fun though it took me a bit to get the hang of it. It is a good thing I did not bring my camera with me as I had some pretty spectacular wipe-outs on some of the sections when going downhill. I had a lot of fun skiing with Erin and after a day of skiing we drove back to my parents in Calgary.

The photos I took are below:[smugmug url=”http://gallery.pfink.ca/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=15208049_UXCdL&format=rss200″ title=”Christmas%20in%20Canmore” description=”Dec.19%20-%20Dec.21″ imagecount=”100″ start=”1″ num=”100″ thumbsize=”Th” link=”smugmug” captions=”false” sort=”true” window=”false” smugmug=”false” size=”M”]

Toronto

This past weekend I got to go to Toronto to see Erin and see some friends eat lots of food, walk through a lot of Toronto and had a great time.

I arrived late Wednesday night and Erin was there to greet me and we took a cab back because it was late. I slept in a bit as Erin went to her first class. I walked down Bloor St. to the university and met her for lunch. The weather was nice and sunny and in the low teens for most of my trip. It seems like Toronto is a month behind Edmonton in terms of getting to winter. After lunch Erin had another class and I read a magazine for a bit before heading out for a walk around the U of T campus. I took some pictures and quite a few of squirrels. They are out everywhere before I slowed my self down on squirrel pictures. After I got back Erin was done her class and we headed back to her place. Erin made some couscous with some grilled eggplant and zucchini and some tempeh bacon. It was quite good, my first veggie bacon. After supper we went on the hunt for some olives so Erin could make martinis. We went to quite a few stores before we found the right ones. After martinis we made some scrumptious chocolate cupcakes for my birthday.

On Friday we went to Union station to meet Erin’s friend and then chatted with her and had a lunch/snack at Starbucks before walking up University Ave. for a bit before dropping her friend off. We then walked to Kensington Market to a neat vegetarian restaurant called King’s Cafe. It was Asian type food some pretending to be meat or just vegetarian versions of food with meat. We had some dim sum items that were quite tasty though sometimes tricky to eat with chopsticks! It was kind of foggy during the day and really foggy as it got darker and darker. It was quite a neat fog as it did not go that high and was pretty low.

Saturday we met my friend Jamey and his wife and twin girls at the Royal Ontario Museum. We walked around the museum, had lunch and saw more of the museum. We had to check in our backpacks and because they had a jacket in the back pack we got charged for it. We got angry about it but there wasn’t much we could do. I had been there before but nothing really seemed all that familiar to me. I think they have also added on to the building since I was there last. There was a special exhibition on The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army it was pretty good but a little busy. It would be nice to go through it when it is less busy and you have a lot of time to read and see everything. No pictures were allowed in the special exhibit. We got some picture’s with Jamey and the babies before they left to go back home.

After the museum we went back to Erin’s place to find a place to eat supper. We found two Italian places that sounded good on Elm street. We took the subway downtown and saw a busy street when we got there. The road was closed and they had a tasting of some sort going. There was also some entertainment like a guy on stilts or a guy twirling fire on a stick. We found the first place but it was full and we needed a reservation. We walked down the street some more and found Frascitati’s. They asked if we had a reservation and we said no and then he said he would go check and fairly quickly came back and got us a nice table. We had bruschetta for an appetizer and some house red wine. We both decided on a creamy tomato angel hair pasta with lobster. It all tasted very good. There were large chunks of lobster in the pasta and even the lobster shells were cut in half and placed on the plate to make it fancy looking. It was a very good meal.

Sunday was my last day before heading back to Edmonton. It was a little rainier today. The other days were all sunny but it wasn’t pouring and much warmer than Edmonton would have been. We took the subway to High Park and walked through part of the park to a big natural pond, Grenadier Pond, that had some ducks and nice houses overlooking it. After our walk Erin made some good Tofu Toes, which are like chicken nuggets but made from Tofu. It doesn’t taste like chicken but they are not greasy at all and go well with different dipping sauces. We then took the subway and bus for a smooth ride to get to the airport.

My plane left a little a late but arrived in Edmonton on time. I had intended on taking the shuttle bus back but for some reason the next one was leaving in 1.5 hours. There were some other people there that were not happy with that so four of us shared a cab and the price ended up being basically the same.

My photos are after the link:
Continue reading Toronto

Jasper!

I had a busy fun-filled weekend. I went to Cadomin and stayed with Erin and her parents at their cabin.

On Saturday after driving to Cadomin, Erin and I went on a hike by Whitehorse Creek.
Sunday we went to Jasper and had stops at Maligne Canyon, Medicine Lake, Mount Edith Cavell and the Miette Hotsprings.
Monday we walked around Cadomin and headed back to Edmonton.

The weather was beautiful. There was lots of good food and a nice big fire in a fire pit for marshmallows.

See below for pictures.
Continue reading Jasper!