WoW Summer Vacation is OVER....

and and and it's officially back to school tomorrow with meetings and getting the clinic set up and and and....

Hope everyone is well and happy....hopefully we will have something fun to BLOG about sometime soon.....

Home again early Tuesday morning

We are home in Houston again. We sat on the tarmac in Newark for 5+ hours on Monday evening due to storms in the flight path, so we got into Houston after midnight. Ray still picked us up and got us home safely.
As we crawl out from under the mess, we will post more pictures later. We enjoyed the last few days in Haarlem with Paula, including a performance of Bellini's Il Pirata reset in modern times. We continued to eat well and drink good beer and other potent libations well into Sunday evening, and then sister Jose took us to the airport for a final goodbye Monday morning.

Too slow for the previous post

A 250-kg giant tortoise. I don't know about the breeding program for this cutie, as we didn't see any others around.
And here is one of Amsterdam's bridges over one of its canals.

The picture on the right is a re-created windmill in the heart of Haarlem. The old one burned down, and this one is being repaired, but we had a great tour of the inner workings by a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide. They have displays inside showing all the inventions that resulted from windmill technology over the centuries. This one was used for grinding tobacco & corn as well as the special cement they use to line the canals.
The picture on the left shows one of the steam-powered pumps they used to empty Haarlem Lake when it was threatening to overwhelm Amsterdam and surrounding towns in the early 1800's. Schipol Airport now lies where 6 meters of water used to stand! Again, a great guide with a vast knowledge of engineering showed us around and explained the technologies. Thanks to brother Jim for suggesting this tour.

Too slow for the previous post

A 250-kg giant tortoise. I don't know about the breeding program for this cutie, as we didn't see any others around.
And here is one of Amsterdam's bridges over one of its canals.

This was the cutest animal at the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam, a few-weeks-old giraffe. It's a beautiful old zoo, with only a few of each animal, but it's been involved in breeding rare & endangered species for decades. We got to see a great show as they fed the California sea lions.
The zoo was one stop on the canal tour of Amsterdam. We apparently got on on the wrong side of the boat, as two of the captains/guides didn't say much or explain where we were going or even follow the route on the map, and one of them even hit a bridge! The middle guide of the three was very entertaining but we were only with him for a few minutes before we got to the zoo. He had the honor of piloting one of the boats carrying the Dutch football team through the canals after they returned from South Africa.
We had dinner overlooking one of the canals and all the people on the street.

OFF to Amsterdam again today

Gonna take in a canal tour and the ZOO..... more info and pictures comin' soon. It's a bit cloudy and cool here today with a forecast of more rain.....hope we don't melt!