Our trip to Holland was uneventful.  The apartment was OK, except the 'second floor' walk-up was really on the American third floor (which I knew) and the stairs up to that lofty height were very narrow and steep.  We've encountered both of those conditions on stairways throughout Holland so none of it was a surprise but I couldn't get my mind off fire while on those stairs.  Finding the place was easy enough, even though we arrived after dark, at about 9 p.m.  Once on the street, however, we realized that we didn't have a house number, only an apartment number "B" and there were about 20 houses on this little street.  Fortunately we were 'adopted' by a waiter in the nearby hotel and he called the emergency number for the Short Stay Group, the vendor we used to get the apartment. 

We did the Rijksmuseum on the following day, but discovered that most of it is still closed, so we also did the Van Gogh Mile, which is a narrated walk between the closed for renovations Van Gogh Museum and The Hermitage where the collection is temporarily housed.  It was a little disappointing, the Internet links didn't work very well, but the walk took us into some very new areas for us.  On the following day I wanted to go to Delft but Alan was not enthusiastic about a two hour train ride.  I could have gone on my own, but got lazy and was suitably distracted doing research with Alan on locations.  He's just finished a play about an American Expat living in Amsterdam so he needed to identify a few settings.  It was good we did that because he has one character hanging around a small neighborhood square, but there are none of those in Amsterdam.  There are big squares, like the famous Dam Square, but the Dutch don't 'waste' the land they build with green space.  The Dutch have a saying "God made the world but the Dutch made Holland," and this is so right, even in a city as old as Amsterdam you can see that they are still reclaiming the sea for housing.  It's a very interesting place. 

When we learned on Wednesday morning that Obama won, that was just icing on the cake.  All along I knew the election wasn't as 'close' as the media was presenting.  I was so, so happy it was with both the electoral college and the popular vote.  Maybe now they will start working together, since there's no possibility of 'helping' Obama's re-election if any collaboration is successful.  I hope so.

We returned home late Thursday evening and I did absolutely nothing yesterday.  That's a real challenge for me but I succeeded.  Today I'm planning to take a yoga class and maybe go to a movie.  I should be working on a project that I've committed to have done by the end of the year, but there's always tomorrow!

Our friend Dorothy comes on Wednesday.  I'm hoping that we can get short trips in to Belfast and Cork while she's here.