Holland: part 2 (long overdue)

We took the Herreshoff and Tiger to the train museum (Het Spoorwegmuseum) in Utrecht. They wanted to go. Who were we to refuse?

They enjoyed the journey to Utrecht from Amsterdam (we rode on the top level of a double-decker train).

I got to pretend that I was a conductor!

Then we went through the "Train Worlds" - World 1 was in a mock-up of an English coal-mining village (with Do Not Enter signs in Dutch, obviously).

The rest of the museum was excellent. It was well-organised, well-maintained (of course), entertaining, and informative.

We walked back from the museum to the train station, accidentally detouring through the old center of Utrecht. I had no idea the city was so beautiful - I'd only really ever seen the inside of the enormous train station.

The obligatory train-arriving shot, for my Dad.

And a marching brass band of Zwarte Pieten (Sinterklaas' assistant) on the Damrak:

And an extremely happy few hours spent building and tinkering and experimenting and playing at the NEMO science museum.

My efforts on the binary word-maker:

After all of our playing (and a LONG troop across Amsterdam, including the FOAM photography museum [crap] and the Rijksmuseum [abbreviated, under renovation]), we had some jenever. YUM.

And then the next day, we feasted on carbs. Pancakes and the BEST apple cake ever.

Yup, that up there was AMAZING. It's at a tiny little hole in the wall called Winkel. We were directed there by our b&b host (we had a super time at Maes B&B) after asking for a good place to go for apple cake. He didn't miss a beat. After watching a steady stream of apple cake portions leave the kitchen, I asked our waitress how many cakes they got through in a day. On a quiet day, apparently, only 60. On a busy day, though, up to 150 cakes. One hundred and fifty apple cakes in ONE day. And it was not a big restaurant.

One last opportunity for frites, frikandel and fritessaus (oh, dear God, I just found a recipe online). This blogger writes about it best, I think. Nectar of the Gods. I could eat it with a spoon. I purposely did NOT buy some to take home. That would mean I'd have to give up on real clothes and just wear a muumuu all day. I didn't get a picture of the actual f/f/f - they were consumed too quickly. Mmmm.

A Grand Day Out

I had an exceedingly stressful week at work - taking on a huge pile of new work, with very little handover. Lucky me! It'll all sort itself out at some point.

The Husband decided on Friday evening that I needed a mini-vacation, so suggested a trip to London on Saturday. Woot. However, spontaneity and National Express East Anglia do NOT mix. John checked the NXEA website for the train schedules (rather than creating a "journey" on their journey planner), and announced that the trains departed Stowmarket at half past every hour. So we drove to the station, paid for our parking, and walked over to the ticket office.

Hmm...what are all those busses doing there?

[epic rant] 

As NOT mentioned anywhere on the National Express website, they were doing engineering works AGAIN, so there was a bus replacement service to Ipswich, where we could catch the train to London. Since we had the car anyway, we figured we'd just drive to Ipswich. I was checking my Trains app to see when the next train was due to leave Ipswich, and tripped over the curb and skinned my palm and my knees. OW. And I blame the evil Train people for mucking us about. See? My injured palm? (I'll spare you the pictures of my skinned knees.)

Skinned knees be damned...let's still go to London. So we drove to Ipswich, where they announced that the normal trains weren't running and we'd have to take a puddlejumper to Stratford and change to the Central line. We'd already gotten this far, so figured we'd go for it. Plus, I still REALLY wanted to go to London. The final insult to (actual) injury was that our two tickets to go 70 miles on the Slow Coach cost us £73. That's over $120. Granted, the puddlejumper took FOREVER, so maybe that's why it cost so much. National Express East Anglia, I hate you. Especially since you've raised my commuter ticket (one way) from Bury to Stowmarket to £5.10. ONE WAY! And there's no way to buy a ten-trip. Can we borrow some Dutch train-experts to come sort things out, please? Thx.

[/epic rant]

Anyway, we DID eventually get to London, where we proceeded to have an excellent time. We stayed on the Central line to Chancery Lane, where we got off and walked up towards Lamb's Conduit St (great name, btw), on our way to Persephone Books. More about them in a minute.

John said, "I'd quite like a coffee and a bun." And magically, Bea's of Bloomsbury appeared out of the mist. (Yes, I look like I weigh 400lbs in my green jacket, but it was FREEZING yesterday). We knew the cake was going to be good when they asked us if we had a reservation. We didn't, but they found seats for us anyway.

I had an extremely large slice of carrot cake with cream cheese icing, which was delicious, and John had a seriously rich piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache icing and caramel and coconut filling.

Sigh.

I should have brought the big camera...

Newly fortified by our cake, we made our way up Lamb's Conduit Street to Persephone Books. According to their website: 

Persephone Books reprints neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers. Each one in our collection of 90 books is intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written.

I agree wholeheartedly. I bought a book, to be reviewed shortly. They also gave me a copy of the most recent Persephone Biannually, which featured a short story by none other than the wonderful Eva Ibbotson. Really? I couldn't have planned it any better. Run, book geeks, run to Persephone Books!

Since we were in his 'hood, we stopped by the British Museum to visit our buddy, the Horus. Unflappable, as ever, and most definitely still in charge of the museum. We had a little chat.

We meandered our way across Soho, to Liberty. Where I really wished that I had brought the big camera. [Camera geeks, any suggestions for a small-ish non-fugly bag that fits an SLR, a paperback or Kindle, and my wallet, phone, Burt's Bees and some kleenex? Thanks.]

Elephants!

And stairs!

And lots and lots and lots of fabric. Didn't buy any, but window-shopped extensively.

I checked Pinterest for London suggestions before we left yesterday morning, and found Tokyo Diner in Chinatown. It reminded me of the places I used to eat in New York - reasonably priced and very yummy. They had a power cut just as we were finishing, so we ended our meal by candlelight. How romantical!

We were pretty much zonked at that point, so we made our way back to the Central line and back to Stratford and back to Ipswich (on an express that only stopped in Colchester, Chelmsford and Manningtree, woot!), and then back to Stowmarket. A supremely Grand Day Out, once we actually made it to London.

Steam train in Stowmarket?

John had to pick the sm. boy up from school on Friday afternoon. Since I wasn't quite finished with work, I stayed late and took the train home. When I got to Bury station, there were a lot more people than there usually are on the platforms. "Must be the bank holiday weekend," I thought.

And then I noticed the two old people sitting on lawn chairs on the opposite platform. Um, what?

The train arrived (on time, thank you British Rail), and we left the station. As we came out of Bury, every level crossing, random field, ditch, and footpath was full of people clutching SLRs, fancy video cameras, tripods, and children. Some in lawn chairs, some not. Thurston and Elmswell stations, same thing.

I figured they weren't all there to watch the 6:25 from Cambridge to Ipswich (my train), so as the conductor came by, I asked what they were all waiting for.

"OH!," he said, "Coming along behind us is a brand-new steam engine. With a full load of carriages!"

I texted John, who was walking down the hill to meet me at the station. He'd already left, though, so we ended up without the SLR. So here is the "holy moly it's going fast" picture from my little Casio, which made a valiant effort, I think.

Here she is, in all her 75mph and slightly blurry glory. The Tornado.

While not out trainspotting, I've been trying to decide what to do with this yarn. I Had To Have It in the store but am now not entirely sure what to do with it. I don't really like knitted socks (too itchy) and I don't wear shawls. Maybe a "fake-isle" hat once it starts to get cold again. Or if it doesn't get warm. Today, June 1, we have the heating on and I'm wearing jeans, a hoodie, and slippers. Brrrrr. Granted, John and I both have colds, but still.

I also just finished a few great books: Fire, by Kristin Cashore, which I didn't like quite as much as Graceling but was still fantastic; The Magic Thief, by Sarah Prineas (recommended by Kristin), which was a little Philip Pullman-esque and very good; Innocent Traitor, by Alison Weir, which was riveting and rather heartbreaking, and The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt. I didn't like The Children's Book as much as the others, but it wasn't bad. Embarrassingly, my book group also read The Book Lovers' Appreciation Society. There were a few tolerable ones, anyway. Mostly, though, it was filled with overly sentimental drivel. At least they were short!

Carcassonne

We have a new board game. It's called Carcassonne and is extremely entertaining. Basically, you build cities, roads, cloisters and farms, colonising them with little "meeples" along the way.


It seems to have a good mix of luck and skill, and after our initial "how does this work?" round, John and I were pretty psyched to play several more rounds. I think once James gets the hang of it, he'll enjoy it, too.


Look, meeples! (The one in the foreground isn't dead, he's a farmer. He actually turned out to be John's game-winning farmer. BAH.)

While I've been knitting muchly, John has built this little engine thingy. It needs to be painted and have a little more glue-time, but I think it's really cute.

By the way, most of my pictures are now being taken with the new Canon EOS 500D from John's brother. It's an AWESOME camera and is really fun to play with. I've found it a bit more intuitive than our older 20D, and all the pictures seem to be much sharper.

Nene Valley

We used John's birthday present from my parents (a two-year, family membership to the Nene Valley Railway) and went up to ride the trains today.

John and James have spent all week making movies (some of which will hopefully be posted on YouTube), and we had some fun shooting scenes from our version of The Great Escape today. Here's one of my all-time favorite pictures of the sm. boy:

We had a really good time taking pics and videos and running around the station, although John's having trouble editing it all into a coherent story line. Oh well, it was fun anyway!

Here's James, on the train, thoroughly enjoying his book (a Darren Shan). What is it with us and vampires?

And this one's for my dad:

As the daughter of a train geek (and ex-LIRR signalman) who married a train geek, I think this should be my new motto:

 

Here's a gratuitous railway shot, for all the fanboys (Dad, mostly):

 

Garden railway

We had such a blast with the trains in the back yard last weekend that we've been plotting the best way to make them permanent. John has a great program called WinRail, where you tell it the scale and brand of your trains (and tracks) and it helps you build a to-scale plan using the tracks available. The current plan is to gravel the top of the garden (where nothing really grows well to begin with) and lay track up there. Ideally we'd also have a 'branch line' coming down the south side of the garden (along a north-facing wall that never gets any light).

Wait, why am I telling you this, when I can show it to you? Here it is, a monument to our epic computer/train geek-ness.

In exchange for the trains, John's agreed that we can also extend the patio so there's room for our chairs and table. There should still be plenty of grass in the middle of the lawn for croquet and we're planning it out so it doesn't foul the clothesline.

The grand master plan is to build a small retaining wall along the right hand side of the garden, as the lawn slopes down a bit more than the train can handle. The grand master plan is to use the dirt cleared from the top to build up the bank on the right. If we ever want to sell the house, we'll just lift the track and all of the train areas can be used for planting.

If nothing else, we're having fun dreaming about it.

4th of July recap (super-late)

We had a fantastic 4th of July (on the 5th - we had to work on the 4th). We had some friends from choir over - an American couple and a Brit couple.  So with the three of us, there were 3 Americans and 4 Brits. Enough for the locals to be able to quell any rebellion in case we got too rowdy.

The weather in the morning was really nasty - it was drizzly and windy and generally gross. Then, at about 12, it suddenly cleared, and the sun came out and we had a gorgeous afternoon. It was about 75 and sunny - perfect for a bbq. Plan A had been to fire up the grill (thanks, mom & dad), which we did. I grilled burgers and garlic-marinated shrimp on skewers, and then left some peppers to roast over the coals. YUM. I also made my grandma's world-famous potato salad and a green salad. We had one piece of pepper and about half a bowl of potato salad left over - everybody wolfed everything else down.  For dessert, James and I made brownies (I let him lick the bowl - i'm nice like that), which we ate with blueberries, strawberries and ice cream. 

We retired outside, where we had a rip-roaring game of croquet.

Then, the hubby had mentioned to Graham that we had some trains. Graham is a bigger train geek than he wants to admit, so we ended up with this:

And this:

Our little LGB train merrily trundled around the garden - grass didn't phase it at all. It even went up and down the hill, after some rearrangement of the track. I took a video but it doesn't want to upload. Bummer.

Rainy Weekend

The hubby has been working in London all weekend - blech. James and I had a fun Saturday - the weather was glorious and we went to the Little Orchard Railway, which John had found on the web. So cute. It's a random model railway built in the guy's back yard. Train geeks are lunatics, truly.



I'd missed bell ringing on Friday night - the logistics of picking up the boys from their various places and feeding them etc was too much for me. I took James with me on Sunday morning, and figured that he'd be fine to sit and play his Nintendo DS while I rang. Every time I looked over at him, he was watching the ringing and ignoring his DS. Here he is, chiming the bell at the end. He said that he really liked it and he wants to learn to ring. He's a little small to start on the Stowmarket bells, but he'll be fine in a year or two. Another one, hooked!

Since the weather yesterday and today has been so completely appalling, we went to see the new Indiana Jones yesterday. It was insanely campy but very entertaining. It was the perfect rainy-afternoon popcorn movie. As I was on my own on Saturday night, James and I went to Blockbuster in the afternoon. I rented Enchanted, which several people had recommended but I hadn't gotten around to watching. I loved it - it was a really clever combo of Disney send-up/Disney love letter/New York love letter movie. Fab.

Mom & Dad

Blogging has been a little light lately - my parents arrived on Wednesday evening and it's been pretty much non-stop since then. We had a pub dinner in Bury on Wednesday night, and then they came to Stowmarket to see the house. It's been given the seal of approval!

Thursday night we met them for dinner at the Ravenwood Hall Hotel near Bury, where we'd last been nearly 20 years ago in a blizzard. When I was a kid we used to go to Holland at school vacations - my dad had an office there. We always took the ferry over from Felixstowe to Zeebrugge, and one night we stopped in for dinner on our way to the night ferry. We remembered the food as being really good, and I've been meaning to go for ages. Mom suggested it and off we went. The food was gorgeous- dad and I split some mouthwatering beef (rare, of course), and then I had the world's best rhubarb fool for dessert. YUM.

Friday I took the day off work and we went to Ickworth (where I had to PAY - the new girl in reception was not responding to ANY amount of name dropping or mentioning of the fact that I was a full-time volunteer for a year), walked around for a bit, and then headed cross-country on teeny-tiny back roads to Lavenham. I'd only been there once for the choir concert in December, so it was really nice to see it in the daylight! It's such a funny little town - it's so old and there are no right angles to speak of.

Saturday we had John's parents over for lunch and then Mom and Freda and I went to the garden centre and bought some plants for our garden. There are bunch of begonias, expertly planted by Mom and James, and a bay tree, a honeysuckle bush, and something else that I can't remember. I'm preparing for a pitched battle against the honeysuckle - apparently they're fairly...er...enthusiastic.

Sunday was a train-fest - we drove up to Peterborough to ride on the Nene Valley Railway and the miniature railway at Thorpe Hall. The boys took lots of pictures (and videos - to appear soon). Here we are on the mini trains:



Phew.

I'm taking another half day tomorrow to see Mom & Dad and we're going round F & T's for dinner - it should be fun. Then I'm going to sleep - I'm totally zonked lately and I can't tell if it's general in-law wear and tear or what.

Ally Pally

Yesterday John and I drove down to London to go to the Model Engineering show at Alexandra Palace. The show was pretty neat, even if it was, as John said, a shadow of its former self. Apparently he went with his dad when he was a kid and it was HUGE. Or maybe he was just smaller...

Either way, on their website they make a big production of how EASY it is to get there. If by easy to get there they mean that you must have a London A-Z street map and be a reasonably skilled navigator, then yes, it was fab. Part of our problem was that there was a road closure on the M25 that they didn't tell you about until you were on top of it, but it could have been worse. We saw 2 signs for the palace on the whole trip - one was a sign pointing off into nowhere and the other was a sign pointing towards the palace, about half a mile away. Problem with that one? We could SEE the palace at the end of that road. Good job, guys.

Here I am at the show (we did actually get there), driving a model tank. They were really fun...you 5 minutes to drive around and shoot other tanks. :)


Here's the outside of the building:


I have more pictures but Blogger has decided to stop cooperating...will post them soon.

Boxing Day

Well, it's my first Boxing Day in a few years...I think the last one I spend in the UK was with the family in 1993. We were at Freda & Travis' yesterday for Christmas Day, after we had Christmas with James here in the morning.

It was really strange - I felt like I was on the 'wrong' side of the morning stocking opening. When Edward and I were little, we were allowed to open our stockings as early as we wanted, and then we had to wait until a predetermined time to go upstairs and wake up Mom and Dad to show them what Santa had brought. Then they'd come downstairs with us and we'd all open presents together.

So yesterday morning John and I were sleeping and James bounced in with our stockings to wake us up. I definitely felt like I should have been bouncing somewhere with my stocking...

We set up the LGB trains (with John's additional christmas track from Mom & Dad) in F&T's living room. I'm not sure if 'set up' is the right word...it was more of a 'takeover'. The boys played with the trains for HOURS...all of the teddies had rides and John and Travis were tinkering with everything and shunting cars around. Then when we got home this afternoon, John set up his new digital Hornby trains...they are REALLY cool but they're going to have to wait for our new house before they get much use...they really need to be nailed to a baseboard and set up more permanently.

Speaking of our new house, we drove by today to wish it Merry Christmas...it looked very cosy and like it's coming along. Our initial walk-through is in January, which is suddenly creeping up on us...

I was going to add some photos to this post - blogger's having issues so you can check them all out on Flickr.

Trains

Last Wednesday, John and I went with my mom to the New York Botanical Garden to see the annual train show. We went pretty early in the day to miss the crowds, since it's one of those things where you can quite easily stand in line for an hour to get in. No thanks...

I posted a whole bunch of pictures on Flickr from the trains and the gardens (and a brief pit stop in the Bronx). here they are...enjoy!

I'm uber jet-lagged - I kept falling asleep at my desk today. To top it off, I have a cold. Mean horrible airplanes pumping yucky air around. Sniffle. I'm aiming to be in bed by 9.