No colourful vistas – the colour is in the details…

It was our second full day with Caroline and Dan today.  Caroline and I headed off early to walk a track in a local park, looking for inspiration for a fibre arts project Caroline will be doing.  The track followed a small stream, with some lovely autumn colors in the surrounding foilage.  While the track itself was fine, there was almost no signage (track names, walking times etc) so it was a bit of a magical mystery tour.  

While we were walking, Dan was smoking chicken and pork for our lunch and dinner – with John doing a bit of fetching and carrying.  Both were extremely tasty!!

We had a quiet afternoon, getting ready to try some fabric dyeing techniques over the next few days.  Tomorrow we are off to meet a friend of Caroline where I will be expected to practice my italian (!) and then off to a winery for a tasting.  Here, unlike NZ or Australia, tastings are generally charged for, starting around $20 and going up from there.

Some pictures of our walk will follow…

Approaching SFO this morning

Some shots from around Pritchard Hill near St Helena, where Caroline and Dan live on a quick stroll this afternoon – in descending order: their view over Lake Hennessey, colour in Bryant vineyards, birds on a wire, autumn leaves. We saw some damage from the recent fires on our drive to their place this afternoon, but in their immediate environs it’s not evident.

So, this is a revival of the blog for our trip to visit Caroline and Dan in the Napa Valley. Earlier this year we hatched a plan (courtesy of an Air New Zealand special) to visit over Thanksgiving – bigger than Christmas in the US.

We arrived this afternoon after an uneventful (the right kind!) flight from Auckland and had our fastest ever transit through immigration and customs in the US – no queues, no issues with John sharing a name with someone on a watchlist, no delays of any kind.

It was a stunningly clear day and we enjoyed our ride up to the Napa – the vineyards are golden as the leaves on the vines haven’t yet fallen. We’ve had a couple of good red wines and welcome meal with Caroline and Dan tonight and we hoping for some more sunny autumn days for the rest of our stay.

The flight out of Melbourne was a day flight so lots of interesting cloud formations and reflection on the way home.

I hadn’t been to Amsterdam before and John was last there 35 years ago (hint: it’s a bit different!).  That was part of our reasoning for trying it out this time.  

We stayed in the canal district – a former work colleague recommended some apartments but when they unexpectedly had to cancel our booking (reading between the lines we think they were exploiting a grey area in the regulations on hotels and the hotels next door dobbed them in!)  we chose a hotel nearby and were very happy with the location – away from the madness of Dam Square and the red light district, but near the Jordaan area of interesting food and with the feel of not just being about tourism.  

We were luckly with the weather – warm and sunny; this meant the Dutch came out to party after winter and the vibe was fun; the museums were wonderful but just being out and about was entertainment in itself.  And like our experience in Scandanavia so much english is spoken that it’s an easy place to be a tourist – particularly at the end of a trip when you just want things to be easy!  So we’d definitely recommend it!

We got home last night after a series of flights: Amsterdam to Dubai, Dubai to Melbourne and finally the short hop home to Wellington.  And we ended as we began – the incoming plane from Auckland to Melbourne was late (fog) so a 5 ish hour stop became more like 6 1/2 hours.  A shower and clean clothes certainly made a difference tho!

We spent our last day in Amsterdam walking…and walking.  It was a lovely mild summer day so we walked back to the museum quarter and visited the small Moco Museum which had a Banksy exhibition.  After that we just enjoyed the canal quarter – the cafes were busy with tourists and locals, the shops were open for browsing and the world was in a good mood.  Our pickup for the airport came a little early so we arrived at Schipol in plenty of time.  

So here are a few shots from the Banksy exhibition at the Moco Museum…

Yesterday we had a later start than we meant to but still got to the Rijksmuseum early enough not to have to queue – which was a pleasant surprise.

Its huge: we hit the highlights – The Nightwatch, the Van Gough self portrait, the Vermeers.  But also fun were some of the lesser known or quirkier objects.

So, we are getting ready to go out for our last dinner in Amsterdam.  We’ve enjoyed it here; our hotel, on the Prinsengracht Canal, has turned out well and is in a really good location, the weather has been sunny and warm and the vibe has been good.

After our visit to the Van Gough museum, we had a day where we walked in the Jordaan area near the hotel, did some shopping in the little streets near us, and that night went on a photo walk in the city ranging more widely than our immediate neighbourhood.  The following morning we were up for a food walk trying typical Dutch food in the Jordaan, and more photos late that night; today we’ve been in the Rijksmuseum for a big chunk of the day.  Have enjoyed it all!

It’s easy to be a tourist here – just stay out of the way of random cyclists!  And out of the area around Dam Square which yesterday seened to be full of hens/bucks trips intent on beer consumption!

Here are a few pics:

We’ve had two days here now and have had some time to play tourist and wander around.  And the weather has been kind – sunny, and cooler than Scotland (never thought I’d be saying that!)

On our first full day we had a 9am ticket for the Van Gough museum; we arrived a little early after a relaxed stroll from our hotel to find a queue forming for the 9am opening and a separate queue for folk without tickets.  Moral of the story – it’s a smallish museum so best book tickets in advance online.

The museum itself was interesting – some of Van Gough’s greatest hits – one’s like his painting of his bedroom and sunflowers that you’ve seen reproduced a million times – and lots that are just as striking but much lesser known. There was also a smaller exhibition of posters from Paris by artists Van Gough knew and/or influenced – an interesting take on the art and style of the period.

We had lunch at the museum and after wandered back to our hotel and dipped into some of the small shops and boutiques around it, before a snack and then a canal trip in the historic boat the hotel owns.  Was interesting to see things from the water.