On the way home

I'm sitting in the Air Canada passenger lounge at Heathrow (thank you, Evan!) enjoying their free coffee and internet and catching up with a bit of Flickr picture uploading (we're all the way up to the second stop in Iceland - just wait for the Greenland pictures!). We left the ship Thursday morning, not without a sense of relief. Three weeks is just a bit long to be cooped up with a couple of loud Texan war veterans. We met some thoroughly enjoyable people, too, of course: Doug and Helen, Larry and Linda (thanks for the meditation sessions), but the others begin to oppress me after a couple of weeks.

We had three days in Amsterdam in a great little hotel Ron found just a block from the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw. We didn't get any museums visited, but we had our share of concerts: a youth orchestra on Thursday and the Rosenberg Trio + friends (Stephane Grappelli / Django Reinhart style jazz) on Friday at the Concertgebouw, and a Bach recital on the magnificent organ of the Westerkirk Saturday afternoon, so we did get cultured up. Friday we tried to get to a cheese market in a small town to the north, but we missed it by half an hour. Never mind, it was a pretty train trip. We also nibbled on a hemp-seed chocolate bar we picked up at the flower market Saturday, but we didn't really enjoy the effects. I got even more sleepy and stupid than usual, and Ron turned bright red. So we're not tempted to add to our list of favourite intoxicants yet. But we like Amsterdam.

So we're heading home. I for one am looking forward to a bit of utter torpitude and some catching up with email, pictures, knitting and other good stuff. Stay tuned for a knitter's view of the North Atlantic and a couple of patterns I came up with while we were away.