Finally, the European Continent! First stop, Amsterdam.

Hi everyone. So sorry about the tardiness with this blog stuff. But here we are. Nothing fancy to start with but you will get some of the flavor.

After over a month at Donna and Gary's lake house in Manson on Lake Chelan and

Thanksgiving with friends in Portland, we explored the Oregon and California coasts with side trips through redwood forests for two weeks, then dropped our Eurovan Camper off at the shipper near Long Beach California. Our luck was to visit some wonderful family for rather long durations...a week in L.A., two Christmas weeks in Nashville and a month in Hot Springs Arkansass. January 29th we flew out of Memphis heading to Amsterdam.

We have been staying with nephew Matt, niece Heather and their son Calvin. Calvin is a 1 1/2 year handsome charmer with happiness and smiles bursting with screams of delight. Their home is in a great area of Amsterdam, a two story apartment in a traditional very tall and thin 5 story building (circa 1800). The two foot wide staircase twists and winds steeply upwards...I have to hold on! It is almost a ladder. Inside, a cozy simple home. Living (and Calvin's play area) and dining and kitchen on the upper floor, two bedrooms and bath below. The back windows look out to many other apartments, old and facing many directions, with tiny long yards stretching into each other at all angles from the street dwellings below us. At the moment, all is icey cold and covered with 3 inches of snow. The front windows look out on a skinny quiet residential street that merges into a great little neighborhood of shops, Deli, bakery, grocery, coffee houses, stationery, computes, appliance, butcher, womens clothing, Indian spice and antiques.

On the weekend, everyone is outside. Children being pulled to the store on wooden sleds...old people with canes, bicycles...everyone bundled up. It is the kind of cold bite accompanied by blasts of wind that makes you pull your scarf around your face, which for me means that I have to take my steamy glasses off. Dutch faces and tall bodies...some look like David, some like our friend Alphonse,..always willing to help us out...and all able to speak English as well as us. Matt takes us to the large Saturday market full of anything you might want...food, antiques, books, clothing, stuff... there were some wonderful prints we would have liked to purchase but there is no space for things like that. Sigh. But we stopped for some pofferjes...tiny puffy pancakes with butter and powdered sugar on top. Very yummy!

Sunday, David and I walked 20 minutes (very carefully!) to the English Reformed Church (Presbyterian church) encountering fat crows in bare branches., with different softer, lower caws than we are used to. Geese, ducks and koots on the canal ice, and a blue heron beside us on the sidewalk. With a little help we spot the right door in a walled compound and then through to the old church, after a fire it was rebuilt in 1490. We loved the service. And the hymns and the sermon. Reminded me of my roots in the United Church of Canada. There were two Scottish pastors....which made me happy. We passed the Peace of Christ among us...everyone got out of their seats! Quite familiar! Coffee hour was spent with the most interesting people, from
Germany, England, South Africa, Scotland. Lots of good chatting. Then, a young doctor joined us for lunch and kept us entertained with knowledge of the church and the Dutch healthcare system. Drugs are not handed out for aches and pains easily. Just a simpler and plainer system, a smart system. One of her stories ended with, "Only the Dutch would build an underground metro system in the mud!" Stolling home we were excited to see skaters on the canals, the first time in 15 years that the ice is thick enough.

In a few days we will be off on a train to pick up our van in Rotterdam, it will be so good to get our cozy little home back, then we will head south to get out of this weather. We haven't chosen our route yet, but we will keep you posted. We really do miss our friends and family alot and hope that we will see some of you here.

Written by Lou for both of us!