Blogs from Delft, South Holland, Netherlands, Europe - page 5

Even though we had had a nap the previous afternoon, we somehow managed to sleep until 11. We awoke to an empty house, as Lenny, Joyce and Misha had gone down to the shops. Soon they were back, and Beck made everyone sandwiches for lunch (breakfast for us!). After lunch Lenny took us to the town of Delft, which Beck had been to when she was younger, and she remembered it as a pretty town with a church in the middle. Lenny drove us past hot-houses to show us the local industry, and they all had schlotes (spelling?) around them, which is like water in a ditch surrounding the land, but they aren't as big as canals. All of the cars we have seen are tiny compared to America and Canada, and lots of people get ... read more

Victory! Another crushing blow of defeat was dealt out to fellow Cloister patrons last night as the mental giants of team ESSP scored bewildering 57 points, easily crushing the nearest team by a margin of 17 and the weakest team by a margin of 25. Ok ok, enough for the headline news style of blogging..even I'm annoyed. So yup, another great quiz night. Do you know what day the US Declaration of Independence was signed? Nope..not the 4th of July. Apparently it's the 2nd of August. See, I'm learning. This one was particularly nice since yesterday was a crazy hot day by Netherlands standards, so we did the quiz outdoors on the sidewalk, which was interesting since cars would come whizzing past within feet of us. It also made for an interesting music round because ... read more

Yesterday was the going away party for a guy named Gordon, whose a cool Scottish bloke in our group. We started off with some company-sponsored drinks at the Half Moon (excellent) and then took a tram to Delft for a tapas restaurant. Holy geez...tapas is awesome. It was something like 12 different dishes we had....cream chese filled tomatoes, chorizo, meatballs, smoked salmon, potato wedges, jalepeno cream cheese poppers....and on and on and on. To top it off was a totally excellent dessert platter with fried ice cream, mango sorbet, ice cream cakes, the works. Definitely worth the tram ride and extra 3 pounds I must've gained. Afterwards, more beers at a pub, like you didn't see that coming!... read more