StringGrrl sees the World

It's been a great few weeks traveling around with Eric. I've been to many places: + Rotterdam and Amsterdam + Dortmund, Germany + East Paris, Ohio + Detroit, Michigan Eric is mailing me back to my family along with a DVD with tons on photos of our trip, and my own VanGogh.

My new friend at the hotel CitizenM  Eric selected the hotel for two reasons Close to the airport, walking distance to the terminal.  Easier to make the 8 AM flight It is pretty cool and not too expensive Eric wrote another post a while back making a review of the Hotel. Here is a link if you would like to see that previous post. http://stringgirl.blogspot.com/2012/08/citizenm-hotel-amsterdam-schiphol.html  This is an American made all electric car. AutoForm is used for this cars engineering also. More Houseboats The view from the Cockpit of a KLM Fokker 100 Jet Windy at the Airport right now

Rotterdam has many small havens and harbors. This one was directly outside my hotel room. This bridge--the Erasmusbrug--was also right outside my hotel. I walked past it every night. This is the Erasmusbrug at night

The Central Amsterdam Train Station, the trains and facilities are modern only the buildings face looks old Don't worry it is only an art installation, not a real person The Van Gogh museum Another museum at the "Museumplein" Rijksmuseum , is the National Museum, the King and Queen of Netherlands & Swedish Royal Family visited yesterday  One of Van Gogh's most famous works (just a print no photos in front of the master works) Snuck this picture while in the upper gallery, Those are Van Gogh's behind me These are by Felix Vallaton, on display in the Van Gogh museum It is a large museum with several levels for both the permanent collection and temporary installations The Royal Palace

Eric's Brother Dave and Nephew Michael who were also in Amsterdam on a vacation from Michigan "spring" After finishing in Germany we packed up and took the train back to the Netherlands. Specifically we went to Amsterdam. One of many canals Flat Luke will be photographed in front of Amsterdam has many canals along which downtown Amsterdam is build. Not just one or two canals but as many canals as some cities might have streets. In the city center you can see that most buildings are on the water. Lots of walking around with all these canals In addition to houses that are build next to the canals, there were many houses directly on water. I guess you can call them house boats. But some of them have probably never been on "open" water. Yes they float, and may have been brought to their current locations being push by another boat or a tug of some kind, but it is clear that they have likely never moved since. Some were made of cement and had bric...

A water bus took us to the office each morning Pedestrian drawbridge Sambal Goreng Tahoe and Sate Kambing Street Art on an old container Statue sitting Harbor at night The "Block house" The Blockhouse photographed using the panorama mode The block house is really cool looking. The buildings are shaped like play blocks that are balanced on a corner. I've never seen another building anything like it.

The next stop for this trip is Germany. Eric has to visit another office for his work. We took a train from The Netherlands to Germany. Really we took 3. Here we are on the train. One is called the ICE (Inter-City Express). It was super fast. Etc guessed that out was no slower than 100 miles per hour, a friend of his told him it was as fast as 250 kilometers per hour.  Much more than my first grade math has taught me. But Eric said that is 155 miles per hour. More than twice as fast as we drive our cars on the freeway. Everything races by very fast At Eric's office i saw that there was a car inside. But the car had no insides, if you know what i mean. Out was just metal. He said that is what his company does. They maker software that people use to design the metal for the car. This is a Fiat 500 (Cinqueciento) AutoForm Software was crucial in its body design I'm hiding among the sheet metal can you find me? Tonight we go out for dinner with his coworker...