Friday night was a girls night out and a low-key celebration for the engagement of my dear friend Kristin. We wanted to celebrate before she moves (sniff!) back to Portland at the end of this month. We had a lot of good laughs and a lot of (ridiculously priced) gin & tonics before the end of the night. I'm going to miss that girl!
Ladies Night out - Leslie, Winnie, Ditte, KP, KJ - look out!
Saturday, it was a beautiful day in Amsterdam, and, guess what? I spent nearly the entire day inside! :( With being out of town so many times in the past month, I needed to get some things sorted out - including all of my winter/summer clothes. I'm happy to say that four trash bags of clothes and three trash bags of shoes to the donation bin later, my closet is happily converted from winter to summer (although I'm concerned that summer hasn't really made much of an appearance yet...). That night, I celebrated the birthday of my friend Dao and called it a somewhat early night (early is midnight here... still getting used to that). :)
Sunday was the best day by far. Kristin and Winnie (who is on her "design immersion" drip from Portland) drove with me to Hoge Veluwe, which is a huge nature preserve and art museum about an hour away from Amsterdam. At the entrance, you can borrow a free white bicycle and pedal all over the beautiful park.
Some of the 1700 free bikes at the park
Of course, it was pouring down rain when we got there, but KJ came prepared with three rain jackets (I think that she learned that I'm a bad raingear girl when we went to Scotland).
KJ models her lovely rain cape - not sure what happened to ther other leg!
We pedalled to the art museum, filled our bellies with some yummy food, and then, the sun came out. We spent a few hours touring the beautiful sculpture museum (which, if you read this on a regular basis, you know is my favorite form of art!).
KJ and I at the entrance to the museum
Rodin's "Squatting Woman"
A sculpture called Marta Pan - it floated on the water - gorgeous!
This one looked like a stairway to heaven, but was closed to visitors because of "an accident"... hmmm...
This was the way the sculpture garden was set up... totally out in nature... part of it was pine trees, and it just smelled SO GOOD!
Next, we realized that we only had 20 minutes left before the art museum closed. We were totally bummed! We quickly browsed through the great collection of Van Gogh's, Picasso's, and Renoir's... definitely a place I need to come back to! Because there had been a mass exodus near closing time, we got outside and there were only 4 bikes left. Two worked, one was a kid's bike, and one had a flat tire. Winnie and KJ took the good ones, and I was left with three options: 1. Be totally uncomfortable and try not to bang my knees on the handlebars of the kid's bike, 2. ride with a flat tire and hope not to bend the frame of the tire, or 3. ride Dutch-style on the back of one of the girls' bikes. I chose option #3. I'm getting pretty comfortable with this, and it was a fun way to see the park.
It was a fantastic weekends filled with great friends!! :)
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