A Day in Utrecht

 Yesterday I took the day off work to go visit Utrecht with Jaewoo and Nicolo who works with Jaewoo. Utrecht is about a 30 minute train ride South-East of Amsterdam. I seem to have a lot of pictures of Jaewoo sleeping...

This is Utrecht Centraal Station

First place we visited was The Schröder House. It was built in 1924 by Dutch architect Gerrit Rieveld for Mrs. Truus Schröder and her three children. Some of the photo credit goes to Jaewoo who stole my camera for a good chunk of the day.

 We toured the inside, but we couldn't take pictures.

 Sidewalks were SO icey

Then we visited Centraal Museum and the Dick Bruna Huis, home of a collection of the famous Dutch bunny character.

We also visited Utrecht University. This is inside the library. The library is so cool - every floor has a completely different layout and they have all kinds of different study areas throughout the building. 

Peaking in on a lecture

Outside of the university

Inside the medical building  

Good day, but I seem to have caught a cold. NOT cool. 

Dank je wel Sinterklaas!

Sinterklaas visited LEVS!!!

Sunday was Sinterklaas (December 5). Sinterklaas is the occasion where the Dutch celebrate St. Nicholas, different from December 25 where they celebrate the birth of Christ. I guess in North American we just mush the two into one occasion, Christmas.

That chocolate is almost gone. I've been munching on it all day today and yesterday at work. Last night Jaewoo and I went to dinner at a restaurant we've passed several times and always talked about going to; Cafe de Jaren.

Hi Jaewoo =)

Every picture I took of the restaurant had this person in the way...

...and I mean every picture.

 Back at home

 

Here is the view from my office today. It was a little foggy this morning. And a little dark tonight.

 There's Borneo Sporenburg from across the water.

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off to visit Utrecht with Jaewoo and his workie buddies :)

Sunny Sunday

It's Sunday... lookin' good and feelin' great!

It's snowy in Amsterdam... today it wasn't very cold. Sunny!!! It was a lovely bike ride to church!

I find it weird, when I'm using my Firefox internet browser everything is in English. Good. But when I use Internet Explorer everything is in Dutch. Not as helpful. All the "sign in" menus, and all the buttons on youtube are in Dutch. I feel like I'm at work with all this Dutch text. Why is this?

Brusselssss

Brussels, Belgium =)

It was a 3 hour train ride to Brussels... a relatively quiet train ride, might I add

And a little snowy!

 Made it to Brussels!

Stores are all decked out in Christmas spirit

Belgium chocolate... yum!! 

Lunch... don't we look happy?!

Someone looks hungry

 The Grand Place

A lot of my pictures had this weird Asian kid's hand in the way...

 ...that Asian kid

Hug anyone?

There's that Asian guy again

Back in A'dam... it's been snowing a little

Christmas is coming!! And so is my trip home :( I'm looking forward to being home for Christmas, but I am really really going to miss Europe. Still enjoying every minute!!

Korfbal?!

Korfbal... what?!

I learned about "Korfbal" today. Danielle at work was telling me all about it. It's huge in Holland, Belgium and Taiwan. It's similar to basket ball played with 4 males and 4 females. Danielle was telling me that they want to make it an Olympic Sport, but the Olympic Federation said that it needed to become more popular among the entire world before it becomes part of the Olympic Games, otherwise the sport would be dominated by a few countries (kind of like how Olympic Hockey, specifically men's hockey is Canada/USA dominated right now). Holland has won the last 7/8 World Championships and the one it didn't win Holland came 2nd.

Image from good ol' Wikipedia

At work I was asked to come up with some signage proposals for a new project. I was looking on the internet for ideas of different graphic styles. Here are some I found on google images that made me laugh...

2nd of December already! Can't believe it! It's snowing here. Biking is interesting. This morning it was super windy, snowing AND cold. It wasn't a nice bike ride to work. I need ear muffs.

Hello White Fluffies

HOLLAND HAS SNOW!!

This is the view leaving work of the Amsterdam's first snowfall this winter (Monday Nov 29)!!

Biking in the snow is fun. Can be dangerous. I've slipped once already. This video was on my way home from work, shortly before I left for the GaGa concert!

And as I mentioned a few weeks ago, LEVS has been nominated for the Dutch Architect of the Year Award. Architecten Web is now accepting votes for the public prize (I don't know exactly how that works) but if you would like to support LEVS feel free to vote by clicking HERE (voting at the bottom of the left column)

P.S. Since when is it December?? I still can't believe October has creeped away. December already?! Really?