4 September: we bid a fond farewell to Amsterdam and the, like totally, amazing Dutch people

omg. so this is it. our last day in Amsterdam and EUrope in general. The last 2 days have been awesome. Yesterday (Sunday, 9-3-06), we went and played in the Park. The Park is Vondelpark, a huge city park where you can bike around all day and go to cafe's and watch the amazing Dutch people do stuff, mostly about 5 times cooler than we do stuff. Plus Dave and Sandi went to the Boom Chicago comedy show at Leidseplein, while Tails, Kathleen, Mikey, and Chuck went to Tio Pepe's, our favourite Mexican restaurant, and it's right on Spuistraat.

Today, we went to the flower market and bought flowers for all of our friends here at the hotel. The hotel is the NH City Centre and we have been staying at the hotel for 11 years now. It's really like our 2nd home, and we have friends among the staff. For some reason, they're fond of their iconic American visitors who show up every August. In any event we just had lunch at La Place Mangerie, which is an unbelievable cafeteria of every possible food you could want. i won't bore you with the details, except to say that if you ever decide to come here sometime with us, don't worry about food. The food here is unbelievably good, and as McGyver always says "you can't find a bad meal in Amsterdam.". He's right of course.

Now -- I depart for a final bike ride in Vondelpark and to meet up with those other clowns. Before i go, two photos the accompany this rant, i mean blog: The group photo is on Saturday Night 9-2-06 when we went the the Seven Bridges Jazz Festival with the 6 of us (Americans) plus Afra and Fleur. There were some cool jazz musicians playing on a stage that had been erected on the canal itself, so a floating stage of sorts. The audience, including us, was also standing on make-shift rafts built perfectly to utilitze the canal for ground space. All in all, our admiration for the DUtch always continues when we see how they handle things so cooly.
The other photo is of our picnic food items for our picnic Saturday night. We had to cancel the ouside picnic because of rain , so we brought everything inside and had a really cool picnic in the hotel room #559 and Afra and Fleur brought a lot of cool stuff, as did we, so it was a real smorgasbord.

Tomorrow - we all fly back to America and can't wait to get back and see all of you - hey i've had enough of these clowns !

steve, dave, and chuck and also miss Sandi, Kathleen, and Michele

p.s. our bikes, as shown in the photo, went nowhere.

Lazy Hazy Daze in Amsterdam 29 Aug - 2 Sept

OMG what a great time we are having here, despite the less than optimum weather.
Well, Gina and Nicole had to leave, and then Mike had to leave also, and that was a bummer. So we miss them now.
But, in good news, we have had Michele Houston (nee Symonowicz) , Kathleen Gannon (nee Houston) , and Sandi Russell show up to chill with us ! (and we are chilling; i had to buy a new jumper the other day).

Then Anne Speijer came back to join us again, too which ruled. But let me back up -

on Thursday night, Piet Boogert and Rob Snijders and Astrid Hoogstede invited us for dinner at the Lloyd Hotel, so Dave and I and Sandi joined them, and that was alot of fun. The Lloyd Hotel is really cool, and Piet and Rob and Astrid are a lot of fun to be with. Sandi ordered the Herring, and actually it wasn't too bad.
On friday, we ALL went to Vondelpark and joined in a huge University of Amsterdam party that was going on - hey the draft beer was only 1.50 Euro each, so how could we not join in? When Anne showed up in town, Sandi and I went to the train station to pick her up, and we parked in the bicycle parking garage. hahahahah check out the photo. They actually have a parking garage for bicycles. There are millions of them here. Of course, we all have one, too. Also on Friday we went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, the Casa di David, and unbelievable good Italian restaurant on the Singel Canal.
Today (Saturday, 9-2-06) Kathleen, Michele , and I went to the Rijksmuseum, and then we saw Sandi and Dave go to the Museum, too. Meanwhile, Tails (now known as McGyver) went to the Maritime Museum. So, it's a museum day here.
Anyway, here's some photos from the last few days..............

chuck (and also those other clowns)