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| Stunning Amsterdam |
All west to east redeye flights are brutal, more so when spanning 9 time zones. Departing San Diego at 10am on Saturday, January 18, and arriving at 11am Sunday in Amsterdam, we drove 1.5 hours south to Eindhoven and checked in the Pullman Hotel. Traveling on the company dime affords a nice hotel.
Since this was a work trip, it involved obviously a work schedule but also dinner with traveling work people with a theme of too much food and alcohol.
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| The workshops |
Gina Wong, an ASML employee assigned to the project, played up the hostess role by bringing in pastries, arranging dinners, introductions, etc. I think I gained 5 pounds on this trip.
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| Very Tasty, and Too Much |
A common theme in Holland is that everyone bicycles even in winter. Sidewalks have a separate path for bikes, indicated by a different texture, no curbs, and sometimes recessed height, to distinguish from the walking part. There are more people biking than walking and sometimes driving in cars. The bikes were unlike what is seen in the USA: upright, sturdy, heavy, and baskets either on handlebars or over the back wheel. Totally functional. I did not see any multi-gear setups probably due to Holland’s flat nature. Only 2 people were on USA style bikes and wearing helmets.
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| Bicycles were everywhere |
Saint Catharine’s church was a block from the Pullman. A graveyard of 750 was discovered during a rebuild. Some of the skeletons were left and displayed, viewable from glass covers in the church steps.
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| From Graveyard, in Church Steps |
On Saturday, everyone took off in a different direction except me. I was hampered by a pulled back muscle so I opted to walk the city in the daytime. Highly walkable and bikeable. We had tickets for the local soccer team’s (PSV) game that evening. The 35,000 seat stadium was a 10-15 minute walk. Notable was that an extremely large woman hip-checked me into the seats in front of us. Hooligan.
Sunday, Gina joined and took us for a day trip to Amsterdam. The first stop was the newly rebuilt Rijks Museum. Impressive. Van Gogh’s self-portrait was awesome but I was smitten by In the Month of July by Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriel.
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| In the Month of July |
Next, we walked to Amsterdam’s town center and were amazed by the bikes, architecture, and canals. Alberto, Dave, and I took a canal boat tour – probably better if we were not so tired. Then we did the obligatory walk thru the red-light district (for us, we only covered one street). Dinner was at Bazar, an Indian restaurant. Mike was stunned by how much the waitress, Valentina, looked like his high-school girlfriend.
We traveled and stayed at Amsterdam airport due to a morning flight. The hotel, CitizenM, was funky with the toilet and shower in separate enclosing tubes in the middle of your hotel room.
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| Funky CitizenM room, with shower cylinder shown. |
I got bumped up the Business Economy, meaning more legroom. Nice. We flew direct into LAX, rented a car, and drove to San Diego rather than wait 6 hours for a connecting flight.
