Brrr…. It’s really cold in Portland!

Here I am looking forward to flying to Portland on Thursday to spend the holidays with family, and then I checked the weather. Holy expletive! Schools are closed today, and the forecast for the rest of the week is for lows in the teens. That makes Amsterdam seem warm.

December in Amsterdam

No, of course this isn’t what it looks like here now. I’m just looking forward to spring and thought I’d share this lovely picture that John took at Keukenhof in April 2004.

The weather isn’t awful here – at least, not yet. It has been cold, but we haven’t had a hard freeze. And at the moment the sun is out, so it’s actually quite pretty. With the sun as low on the horizon as it is this far north, the light is awesome.

The Sinterklaas festivities should be over now. Last night was the night when the children were supposed to set out their shoes. I actually saw a Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet yesterday evening when I took Märzen out. They were hurrying down the street – on to the next party, no doubt.

Lately we’ve been entertaining ourselves by catching up with old friends on Facebook. I’ve found people I haven’t seen since the late 60s, as well as the Silicon Valley crowd. I also found my dad there, which was a big surprise.

In other excitement, Kent and Heather Sisk (from Portland) are transiting the Panama Canal on their boat, Hiatus. We kept the webcam on all yesterday afternoon and evening in order to try to capture a picture of them. We got several, but this is the best. (Hiatus is the boat on the left, the last in the line of boats leaving the lock.) Heather posted on her Facebook page that they had to spend the night in the lake, so they’ll finish their transit today.

Otherwise, we’re just living a normal life here. Cruising isn’t always fun and excitement, you know. We are trying to figure out our plans for the summer, though, and that’s fun to look forward to.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving with just the two of us, plus Märzen, of course. John is making potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, dressing, Brussels sprouts, and chicken. It is possible to get turkey here, but it’s expensive, and with just the two of us and our small oven, a big chicken will do nicely. With all the dishes, we’re having the standard problems with refrigerator space, so John is stashing some dishes – and the bubbly – in the cockpit.

The temperature here is about the same as Portland, but as Mom pointed out when she called on Skype this morning, it rains a little more here – more like Seattle. If you still don’t know about Skype, you should check it out – at least, if you have any friends or family that are a long distance phone call away. It’s free computer-to-computer calling and very inexpensive computer to landline.

It's snowing!

Yesterday it was just hail and sleet. Now the temperature has dropped, the wind has changed, and it’s snowing. So far it isn’t sticking much, and the forecast calls for a little warming, so we hope this won’t last long.

Yesterday we braved the elements to do some provisioning for Thanksgiving at the big market at Noordermarkt. We won’t be having turkey, but John will roast a chicken, and we’ll have most of the traditional accompaniments including cranberry sauce. Our first time through the market we couldn’t find the cranberries, but we spotted them on the way back. We’ve invited Dandelion to join us, but Kerry and Zelma seem to have met a lot of expat moms and babies here, so they may have other plans.

While exploring the Seven Seas Cruising Association website today, I discovered that there’s a third U.S. sailboat wintering in The Netherlands. Guardian, whose home port is Boston, is in Rotterdam. I’ve contacted them, and maybe we’ll arrange to meet sometime.

In big news from the States, our nephew Joel Stocks has just been promoted to sous chef at 50Plates in Portland, Oregon. I haven’t been there yet because it just opened in July, but I’ve read some of the online reviews, and it sounds great. I’m looking forward to checking it out when I’m in Portland for the holidays. We’re very proud of Joel and feel we contributed a little to his career by taking him to the French Laundry when he was still in high school. Of course, that was the only thing he asked to do when he visited us in San Francisco. Even then he wanted to be a chef.

Photo credit: I found the photo on the blog of Marc van der Chijs. Except for taking Märzen out and a trip to the store, we aren’t going outside.

Sinterklaas is coming to town

Sinterklaas is pronounced almost exactly like Santa Claus and the two are very closely related. Sinterklaas is a shortening of Sint Nicolaas — you know, jolly old Saint Nicolas. You can read more about him in this Wikipedia article. Anyway, he’s arriving in Amsterdam by boat this morning, and there will be a parade this afternoon. It’s a very big deal here, and boats have been going by us all morning with children on their way to meet him.

This is also Zelma’s first birthday (she's the baby on Dandelion), so happy birthday, Z!

John and Zelma’s dad, Andrew, have been doing their part this past week to help with the Dutch Sinterklaas celebration. One of the canal boats at the marina needed to have some work done to get it running for today. With Sjoerd acting as their agent, the guys took care of everything. And our big outing of the week was a trip to the chandlery for parts and supplies.

At the end of last week, I also got to spend a few hours with my friend Marike. She was coming to the city to visit a Chinese store and get some CDs for her Qigong exercises and invited me to join her. We had a wonderful time. One of the stores we visited looks like a great source for kitchen implements and spices. I’m planning to take John there sometime since he’s in charge of the galley.

We also visited the farmers’ market at Nieuwmarkt. It was much less crowded than the one by us, which was nice, but what made it really special was that Marike knows a couple of the vendors and introduced me. I was especially impressed to meet a real Dutch farmer and get a close look at some of his produce. There were several root vegetables I’d never heard of like parsley root and black salsify. After looking it up on Google, I think salsify sounds tasty, and maybe we’ll try it one of these days. It certainly didn’t look very appetizing, but it seemed quite popular.

To top off the outing, Marike treated me to lunch at a nice restaurant called Café in de Waag. We might meet Marike’s sister Gemma there one of these days. I hope so because I’d like to see her again too. One other thing is that we spoke Dutch the whole time, except for a couple of times when I lapsed briefly into English.

Photo credits: Sinterklaas came from Intelligent Travel from National Geographic Traveler, a pretty cool looking blog, but the photo credit belongs to the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Marketing. De Waag came from a Picassa photo album owned by BH. I left a note of thanks for BH, who seems to have traveled to many of the places we've also visited.

It’s good to be American

In the week after we elected Barak Obama to be our next president, it’s good again to be American. On the tram home from the election night party I carried one of the paper U.S. flags that had decorated the tables. People noticed. Many said, “Obama,” and smiled. We said “Yes!” and grinned broadly.

While waiting for the tram we got our first text message of congratulations from Maria, who was getting ready for work. We heard from all of the rest of our Dutch friends before the end of the day, either by e-mail or in person.

The Dutch were always friendly to Americans, but now when they hear our accents, they ask if we’re happy about Obama. Of course we are, and they let us know that they are too.

(Can you find us in the photo? We're towards the back and against the wall. The woman next to me is from Kentucky, but we know she voted the right way.)

Too busy celebrating to blog

As the countdown to west coast poll closing started on CNN, it was echoed here in Amsterdam. When we got to zero and CNN announced that Obama is the president elect, the room went wild. Champagne was passed, toasts were made, cheering and chanting went on until McCain's concession speech. It was received with respect except for occasional outbursts of applause.

It was great to get a comment on the blog from Mom's family room. I'm sure you're all as happy as we are. A telling comment here was, "Now we can be proud again to be Americans." Everyone here is thrilled, and I was getting text messages from Dutch friends all afternoon wishing us the best, so I know the rest of the world heaved a huge sigh of relief as well.

We'll be hanging out here to see if the California voters do the right thing on Prop 8. We only get to vote the federal ballot, so we couldn't help with that. Congratulations to Colorado for their good sense in defeating Prop 48.