11 January Wednesday Tuesday DAY 47
Morning spent completing blog for
the period 1 – 10 January. See https://neuage.me/2017/01/12/more-of-not-the-same/ which took longer
than expected which isn’t that always the
way? To paraphrase Narda. We write these in Word
but change it to html for an online blog, each photo gets re-imaged so it is
easy to read on any device.
We envision this one to be
complete about a week from now when we are in Utrecht, Narda’s
birthplace. We are winding up six-weeks in the States: one week Hawaii, a week
in Oregon, a week in New York and three weeks in D.C. As we write this we have
five days left before we leave but I am sure we will find more than enough to
keep us busy. When this gets posted we will have spent a day in Helsinki which
now we wish we had booked a couple of days in, and we will be settled –
hopefully, into our home for the month outside of Utrecht.
We left the house this morning with the thought of merely going to the hardware shop and getting some plywood or other cover for our two stained glass windows we made a few years ago and are trying to get to our home in Australia. At Ace Hardware, the shop that actually assists customers, unlike big box store hardware places that ignore us or if they see us heading toward asking for assistance they quickly disappear down another isle, we were given cut offs of sheets of plexiglass for free and cardboard. From there we figured we should get a few groceries at Safeway. Then we decided to go to the Metro Shop and get SmarTrip® cards for ourselves as we have been using Chris and Jessica’s cards to explore the city and for me to get silly material for my Facebook posts. I was up for a senior half price card which is 85 cents for a subway/bus and half fare to the airport next Monday. The difficulty with driving in DC is finding parking. It is best to take public transportation but we were in our car going from street to street in search of a carpark. The one we found was in front of a very fancy building. The National Building Museum @ 401 F Street NW http://www.nbm.org/ this seems to be the place where presidents have their inauguration balls each turn over. In 1885, Grover Cleveland began the tradition of hosting presidential activities in the Great Hall; a tradition that lives on in present day of we won’t say who next week will be strutting their stuff
.
The building is quite incredible and we saw a few exhibits and got back home six hours after leaving to get some stuff to pack our stained-glass windows. We realise we would drive anyone nuts who travelled with us as we change our mind so often rarely doing what we set off to do.
On the way to collecting our new senior-money-pinching-metrocard we came across the Terrell Building. Aside of the fact that it seems to have a lot of office space available to lease it caused us pause so I could Facebook myself in front of it.
12 January Thursday Tuesday DAY 48 of trip
After going through
the stuff from Terrell’s father which was still stored here (by our realtor and
attorney…good people, let us know if you need a reference) we decided to make a
massive parcel and mail a whole lot of stuff home. It actually took pretty much
all day to sort it all out, including our little stained glass windows, which
we made when attending Stained Glass101 in upstate NY one snowy winter many
years ago. I have my fingers crossed to see if the glass makes it.
We picked up Liam from
day-care today, he was very pleased to see us. Little gorgeous boy. He has a
fascination for trucks, especially bulldozers, which he calls “boobootrucks”, always followed by “very loud”.
I’m sure going to miss
this little guy.
13 January
Friday Tuesday DAY 49 of trip
Today, nearly our last
day we took a bus to Georgetown. It’s always one of the bonuses in bus travel
that you get to speak with the locals. I was sitting with a lady, about my age,
and commented on the picture of a certain deplorable person on the front page
of my newspaper. Actually I turned the paper face down and commented, “I can’t
look at him”. This started a long and emotional conversation about her fears
for the future and the future of her children under this looming
administration. She actually started getting teary.
At the next bus stop we started talking to an older guy (the older folks are so much more amenable to conversations), who had fairly recently retired from a long career in the ‘services’, which also included the Department of Homeland Security. He was very knowledgeable; and also very concerned that we have the potential of ‘running over a cliff’ with this new government. Blimey. We saw this from a distance easily enough; the media keep us on a 24hour loop, and we all agree that we are talking about a ten year old bully running things, but when it comes from an insider, that’s worse. Over 90% of Washington DC voters voted against Trump. He has promised to overturn Obamacare, to cancel the peace agreement involving nuclear weapons with Iran, to skip NATO, and to embrace Putin. All wonderful things to look forward to and this is only a small part of it.
We went to The National Museum of American History. As always there are not enough hours so we have to be selective of what we see. This museum has a lot of areas to explore but with just an hour before we had to leave to do Liam-duty we went to the first thing we saw.
Exhibitions: FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950–2000 (Julia Child’s home kitchen, re. fast foods etc.) http://americanhistory.si.edu/food; 1950s and earlier life – including first mobile homes which we liked especially as we are in the transitional stage of becoming grey-nomads. As of yet I have few grey hairs (probably because I won’t be seventy for another eight months, + I let Narda do all the worrying and I just take photos and happily live in la la land) but I don’t think that grey hair is the number one qualification to be a grey-nomad. Just being old and travelling heaps. This caravan from the 1930s is not much different from what we have back in Adelaide. There was a bedroom, kitchen and sitting area. Couldn’t find the loo but perhaps it was beneath something. I would rather have this one than our newish one though we have a bike rack on ours. No doubt they were better made in the 1930s. A rather cool site for caravans of this era in the UK is at http://www.period-classic-caravan-club.co.uk/1930s
Having grown up in upstate New York in the 1950s – 1960s I remember these cars and going on trips every summer with my family.
We didn’t get to any of the other areas and planned to go back but other stuff filled our days and that was it. I would suggest going to their web site and having a bit of a plan of what to see. Of course we never do that and I start planning after we get to a city then start planning after we get inside of a museum or place of interest so I am not a good tourist guide. Learning to live in the moment back in the 1960s (‘be here now’ and all those groovy sayings which has become re-packaged and trendy now as ‘mindfulness’) I have no sense of what comes next. Narda begins planning a year in advance the detail and I look for the exit door in the moment. Somehow it works and we do get to lot of places and see stuff.
14 January Saturday DAY 50 of trip
Hard to believe that we are at day 50. Didn’t we just leave Adelaide a few days ago? We are coming to the conclusion that we are should be global-grey-nomads, not just going around Australia dragging our caravan nomads. Just spend the rest of our life going and never staying for long anywhere. Not sure how the economics would work though. I don’t care what folks say that money is not important – it is – we need to get to the next place and eat and stay somewhere. We made a four-month budget which at times we come close to being close to but more would be better. And having a twelve months of travel budget that would include at least business class travel on long trips would be good. The alternative is to leave all we worked for and saved all of our lives for to our children to flitter away on the latest smart things and trendy beers and wines and we go into a nursing home.
As we were heading out of town shortly we spent the day packing and cleaning the house until early or late afternoon. Time is a matter of translation in comparison terms. To me it was late, to me-side-kick it was early. Not to worry we got our sorry asses out the door and into the cold DC air.
So day 50, about twenty of those in DC, and we had our fourth museum day, and as in the past we were able to squeeze in a bit of an hour or two at the Museum of Art. I like art museums. Always have. I never spend much time in them but every so often I need an art fix. Old art. Not the new throw-paint-on-canvas stuff; ‘I can do Jackson Pollock’ dribble (I used to do that as a street artist in New Orleans too, 1968 and 1971 - 1974) that people drool over now days but real art. We spent blocks of minutes looking at some of the best of Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, and as we are heading to Holland the best of other Dutch artists and other old shit. There was a room full of folks attempting to make art of art they were looking at, if we had time maybe we would have joined them. Probably not. Feeling refreshed, enlightened, fulfilled as tourists of the moment we took a bus back home.
I did my first picture poem of the year and posted it to several of my photographic-art sites such as:
·
https://youpic.com/photographer/neuage
/
·
https://plus.google.com/collection/E_6JaB
·
https://www.behance.net/neuage
And of course many
more. What was significant in my little world was that I finally did something
creative on the road. I want to be able to travel and continue with projects
such as writing e-books and doing my photographic textual work. So far on this
trip we just seem to be too busy. Everything is about priorities but my
priorities are travel, experiences, creativity time to do writing, photography,
films, as well as read and spend time with others. I need to be on a planet
with twice as many hours and twice as many days in a year.
15 January Sunday DAY 51 of trip
Last day today, spent most of the day cleaning and packing. We took Liam to the park in the morning; the weather was a little warmer, sun, shining and Liam really enjoyed playing outside. We put him to bed for his afternoon naps; he slept 3 hours! During the nap we cleaned the car too, the I took Liam to Chris’ church. Chris preached another masterful sermon on grace, and our prideful unwillingness to accept God’s grace. He always manages to hold his audience, and to find a new and interesting angle on stuff I have listened to for so many years.
I didn’t go to church, stayed home: wrote, did photoshop, listened to music (Supremes and other 1960’s stuff) and had a wonderful evening.
Packing is difficult. We have already sent a box of we had
too much stuff to carry onto the next flight to add to our shed of stuff back
in Australia.
16 January Monday DAY
52 of trip TO
HOLLAND
Leaving America; sad.
I will miss the kids. We had a long trip ahead of us, first Chris dropped us off
at a Metro stop; Liam said ‘bye bye Oma, bye bye Rell’, about 3 minutes after
we had left…bless him!
The ride to the
airport was easy; Ronald Reagan Airport is so nice; old style classy, and not
too big. It’s been added to our ‘favourite Airports’ list, along with Portland
and Schiphol. The next leg to Helsinki was fine, no hassle, but I certainly did
not sleep, despite the sleeping pill. Bummer. Food with Finnair was good, hosties, all blonde and very fair-skinned, many with
plaits, were friendly.
The next stage was
interesting. We arrived at around 9am, and did not need to leave for Amsterdam
until 4pm, so we found an airport locker (6 Euros) and took the train to
downtown Helsinki (5 euros each, each way, but worth it!). A very nice city,
snow covered, lots of old building, a harbour and some wonderful eateries,
where we ate smoked cheese soup (Yum!!!) for lunch. WE walked to the ferry
terminal and discovered that we could have taken a 2 night cruise, leaving that
day to Stockholm and back for 90 Euros. A special for a quiet winter day and
certainly a great idea for a future trip. There are also ferries (I mean large
ships with cabins) running to Tallinn, Estonia, and St Petersburg. So a word to
those considering Finnair; a stop-over in Helsinki has many interesting
possibilities.
17 January Tuesday DAY
53 of trip
On the return trip to the airport we were both so tired, we slept and missed the airport stop. We managed to cross the tracks and go back with plenty of time to spare. When I got to the airport, I fell asleep sitting bolt upright; possibly with my mouth wide open and drooling, but Terrell will not tell me! [Why would I? The other passengers and I were all taking bets on who could shoot the M&M into her mouth]
Anyway, slept all the
way to Amsterdam. Met the Dutch guy, Hans, in whose house we will be living, at
Schiphol. Alice had made us a delicious meal of pumpkin soup and Indonesian
rice. Life is good. I slept with the aid of Chris’ American over the counter
blue sleeping pills, for 12 hours straight. I don’t think I’ve ever done that
before.
18 January Wednesday DAY
54 of trip
Our first day in
Holland. We slept until about 11 I think it was, Terrell on and off, me solid
(it’s usually the other way around!) had a lovely time revelling in all the
good food at the local shopping centre (amazing). I will take some photos. Mum used to say, food is so much better in
Holland, which used to vaguely irritate me as a young person, but she was
right. She did stop saying it in later years. So we bought croquettes, both rund flees and vegetarian and some salade
punnets….all good.
After it started getting
dark, which was pretty soon, we drove into the old town. It was not so easy,
especially when bike tracks look like roads, so it was a combined effort, one
driving (me) the other bossing the one around. It seemed to work well.
I managed to collect a cold somewhere between DC and Holland. Narda had a cold and sore throat for about four weeks now it is my turn. I managed to sleep about six hours and finally slept sitting up in the lounge. I dragged myself through the day. No one will feel sorry for me. We are retired travelling the world, couldn’t be better – except not to have a cold.
19 January Thursday DAY
55 of trip
You’d think I would be
getting sick of travelling by now, but no, I’m just getting started. Being in
different places, places I’ve never seen before excites me. I do miss family,
but I also know that I will see them again soon. This is a great way to travel;
we don’t do much touristy stuff, rather we try to experience it all as locally
as possible.
In the evening we had
a very gezellige time with Tom and Ineke who came to visit. I was able to talk with them about
mum’s last weeks and they took the funeral service program and death notice
card with them.
I met Narda’s uncle and his wife about a decade ago. They stayed with us in upstate New York and a memorable moment was driving to NYC for a day. We were standing in Times Square on the day Ronald Reagan died and a reporter asked them how they felt about Reagan’s death and Ineke said ‘we’re from Holland we don’t care’ and on the large screen above Times Square there we were. How cool is that? I also remember Tom and his pacemaker/defibrillator. His parents were told at birth that he would not live past 14 or 15 years old because of his heart condition. He is now in his mid-80s and on his third pacemaker/defibrillator while I am on my first.
20 January Friday DAY
56 of trip
I managed to feel sorry for myself for the day catching a bit of sleep off and on all day because I could not breathe due to my stupid cold. By 4 pm though we were bored with my condition and sitting around the house watching me dying or close to it so we bundled up and headed to the next nearest town, Oudewater, a fifteen-minute drive away. See our YouTube clip at https://youtu.be/vinkc4CMSUE
21 January Saturday DAY
57 of trip
Amsterdam