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Tag: travel

Charleston days 3 and 4 - Plantation visits and more food

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.
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Charleston day 2 - Wrought Iron and Religion

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.
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Visiting Charleston

Depending how you looked at things, I started my retirement this past Fall. Part of the plan was for Devorah and I to travel a bit more - something we rarely got to do when we were younger. I did have a great trip with Batya to Holland and Belgium but Devorah and I, other than a couple of weekend getaways, weren't able to go anywhere. We planned to finally have a trip in January but I broke a toe.
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The Hague and an extra day

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.
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Amsterdam days 3 and 4

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.
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Amsterdam, the first two days

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:
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Antwerp in 24 hours

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.
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Brussels

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.
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Utrecht

So I'm spending these two weeks vacationing in Europe with my daughter. She was planning on this trip anyway as part of her work "recharge" and is taking me along for a first retirement trip. So, if you're looking for CS Ed content or Emacs come back in a week or two since today is all about travel We spent the last few days in Utrecht. Why Utrecht? Why not.
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CSTA 2019 Preconference

It's Monday morning, 7:45AM local time. Being on East Coast time, Devorah and I have already been up for about 3 hours, hit the gym and our first cups of our chosen caffeinated beverages. Since it's not unbearably hot outside - a cool and dry 80 in the shade - we're sitting outside. Devorah's knitting another square for Blanket Statement so I figured I'd write a few words about what we've been doing here in Phoenix leading up to our starting with our conference later today.
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