Monday, September 22, 2008

End of a sunny week

Mark your calendars: we just had a whole week without rain here! In fact, it may have been a few days more than a full week, but we have a 70% chance of rain tomorrow. We’ve enjoyed it while it lasted, going for walks and boat rides.

On our way home from our second dinghy tour last week, we spotted the sailboat Dandelion tied up along the canal where the boats who taking the “standing mast route” through Holland go. Dandelion is the boat that crossed the Atlantic as we were crossing from the Azores to France and that stopped in Cherbourg while we were there. The skipper, Andrew, grew up in Eugene. He’s now been joined by his wife and baby daughter. They were headed for Finland, but it’s late in the year to finish that voyage, so they’re going to spend the winter here at Marina Westerdok too.

We spent the first few days rafted up, which is always gezellig (an untranslatable Dutch word that means something like cozy, but now Dandelion has its own slip. In a few days we hope to move too to a slip that isn’t on the outside. The Dutch are very good boat handlers, but there’s lots of traffic in the canal, especially when the weather is nice, and it feels safer to be in an inside slip.


From a walk in Vondel Park

One of the canal boats

Another canal boat

At the farmers' market

Apparently there are no freight elevators here

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