For our one year anniversary on Thursday, Erin gave me an Indian cookbook and some spices in jars. The book is called “An invitation to Indian cooking” by Madhur Jaffrey. According to the cover it is “perhaps the best Indian cookbook available in English.” Erin came up with some recipes that sounded good for us to try: Shrimp pullao Potato patties (aloo-ki-tikiya) Kheer and Naan (We didn’t bake naan just bought it) It took awhile to make everything, the potato pancakes took a while. Everything turned out quite good, the potato patties were quite salty. We think we can use way less salt next time! As part of our cooking we made sure to break in the cookbook by spilling milk on it. Below are some photos of the food and getting ready: ...

So I arrived back in Edmonton on May 22 to end a great trip. All my pictures are now up, still unorganized but I am working on that. I will rotate them and say where they are from. http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands/ And added a new gallery: http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands-2/ Some things we did from my last post: Went to Delft to see the town, delftware and a botanical gardens Visted some of Erin’s relatives in Alphen aan den Rijn Went to Arnhem to see a ballet and to Ooseterbeek to see memorial and graves for Operation Market Garden Went to Keukenhof – very large tulip/flower garden/tourist park Went to The Hague again to see some of the buildings and museums and tours Went to Amsterdam again to walk around, get candy and go to the NEMO Science Centre

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. ...

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. ...

Pictures are available here: http://gallery.pfink.ca/Travel/Netherlands-2011/Netherlands/ They are unsorted and will be changing as I update them Also see some of them below click link above for all ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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.

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. ...