As I mentioned in my CS-Ed Podcast post, yesterday was a washout. Seriously scary storms. We ended up spending the entire day in the hotel but was able to get to Middleton Place for dinner. The original plan was to do the entire plantation during the afternoon but that was a no go. Instead we got there a little before our reservation time which did let us wander the grounds a little before heading in to the restaurant.

We started day 2 with a walking tour. We've been using Free Tours by Foot or similar services. No fee or a small reservation fee up front and then pay what you want at the end. We generally haven't been disappointed and also generally end up tipping voluntarily about the same amount as what we'd pay for a pay up front tour. We walked around downtown getting more local and US history and learning about the city.

I read this morning that David Bouley has passed away at age 70. Bouley was an influential chef in New York city. A huge influence on the fine dining scene that has developed in the last few decades. Why am I, a retired computer science teacher writing about a decorated chef? As fate had it, there are some connections between David Bouley and Stuyvesant High School, specifically the new building, where I spent most of my career.

I was born and bred in NYC. Went to public school and worked mostly in the public sector. I've lived my life among one of the most diverse populations in the world. As a Jew, I've also only lived in a communities pn which Jews, though a minority, are accepted and frequently assimilated. Throughout my life I've rarely faced antisemitism personally and feel that even in the greater USA, public occurrences of antisemitism have been relatively infrequent.

Last day of the trip we decided to take a day trip to The Hague. On the way we passed through Haarlem For some reason I couldn't get this song out of my head We had some time to do some wandering and even stumbled upon their Chinatown: but the reason for the trip was the Escher museum Cool museum in a beautiful mansion. It had tons of Escher's work along with his story.

We started walking from our hotel to the Van Gogh museum. On the way we passed the Cow Parade store. This was pretty cool since we remember the Cow Parade from back when it was in New York decades ago. Big fiberglass painted cows at random spots in the city. The Van Gogh museum was pretty amazing (and also had wood floors). While most of his best known works might be in other museums around the world there were plenty of great ones to view and admire.

Final leg of the trip in Amsterdam. Train ride and hotel went smoothly but we were hungry so got a quick bite across from the Rembranthuis After some wandering we found our way to the WWII Dutch Resistance Museum. Great place to go if you want to be both proud and inspired and depressed at the same time. It contained propaganda from both sides Photos of hiding people and equipment:

Heading to Amsterdam this morning and we'll be here until mid next week. We spent yesterday in Antwerp but for a while we didn't know if we were going to get there. Unbeknownst to us when we planned our trip, yesterday was the season's first general strike in Belgium. When we found out in Brussels we weren't sure we'd be able to get out of the city at all but it turned out that while the local trains would be out the intercity ones were going business as usual.

We spent the last few days in Brussels. Got in on the Eurostar at around 1:00. We were crashing with a good friend - a teacher who worked with Devorah back in the day but left NY and is now in Brussels. The catch was that she wasn't getting home from work until 5:00 so we had to occupy ourselves until then. Schelpping around rolling suitcases usually isn't a big deal but there were two challenges.

A friend of mine reached out the other day, it turns out a friend of theirs was all of a sudden locked out of Amazon. Couldn't view videos, couldn't purchase, as far as I could tell and couldn't get to their paid for content. Amazon said that the user violated their terms of service but didn't specify how or when and after a couple of back and forths they declared the case closed.