Leiden bicycle city

Bicycle!Today I went into the city and I made some pictures of the typical spots in Leiden. I thought this would be nice to send to some of the people I met in America. Funny thing is that it was impossible to make a picture that did not have a bike standing in it somewhere.

I made photos of the market with huge amounts of bicycles, photos of bars and terraces with lots of bikes, photos of canals with bikes, windmills with bikes, lots of bikes everywhere. As soon as I manage to get some of the pictures on my PC I will post them on this blog.

Chilling

Home again, and I plan to take it easy for some time. The first few days at home I seemed to notice the jet-lag, but in a good way. It felt like my blood was pumping with endorfines, adrenaline and other -ines (like caffeine and vitamin). It must be because I’m feeling at home again because I feel seriously happy.

Statistics

Number of miles driven: from 10500 to 19200 means nearly 9000 mile!
Weight: from 74 to 68 means a decrease of 6 kilos!
Countries: Mexico, USA and Canada
Number of Bud and Miller beers: a lot
Other beers: Heineken, Gulden Draak, Duvel
Other cocktails: Long Island Iced Tea, Margarita, White Russian, Sex on the Beach, Strange pink drink, …
Free drinks: A lot!
Number of times drunk, impressing even an Australian guy: 1
Number of times I could not remember the night before: 5
Number of times embarrassed by not remembering the night before: 2
Number of times my site was down: +/- 10
Number of times my site was hacked: 1
Reaching the cars maximum speed: 1 (in the desert so it was safe)
Money won in Vegas: $40
Money lost in Vegas: $80
Money won elsewhere: $10 (bet: $2)
Photo’s made: 5 rolls (disposable) and 1170 digital
McDonalds visits: +/- 6
Burgerking visits: +/- 1 (tried the new angus) (pretty nice!)
Subway visits: A lot
Duitse au-pairs: 4
Days that I spoke German: 3
Postcards send to Holland: 12
Postcards with objectionable content: 1
Postcards and packages that were lost: 4
Still to arrive (I hope) because being send by boat: 1 (posters)
Sites where you could speak German: San Francisco
Sites where you could speak Dutch: Brice Canyon
Weirdest monologue: Fat black guy in Detroit
Accidents with planes: 33%
Luggage lost: 1
Illegal substances brought to America: 0
Illegal substances offered to me in America: A lot!!! (hash brownies, mushrooms, XTC, heroine, marihuana)
Illegal substances used: 0
Manga books bought: 3
People interested in reading my manga books: A lot
People addressing my driving: 1 (park ranger)
Talking about ocmputers: 0 … yes, really zero!!!!

Home again!! :-D

I have arrived. Yesterday morning a little after 4 I started my trip home after a very short night with only an hour of sleep. First I traveled from San Fransisco to New York. The flight over was a smooth ride until just before getting of the plane. During the taxiing the pilot hit a little truck and a big piece of metal got stuck right inside the left engine… This resulted in a waiting time of about an hour.

Afterwards I took a flight from New York to Amsterdam. A flawless flight without any problems checking in. I arrived with only 45 minutes of delay and found out my luggage was lost. :-(
Well, I’m happy to be home again. Even happier that I expected. My home was perfectly clean when I arrived… Nice. :-)

Foeter

I think this will be my last post from the US of A. The PC that’s at my home in Holland seems to be slowly dying… but still it worked for quite some time (thanks to webmaster Frank!).

See you all in September!

Yawn

Yesterday I arranged to spend the remainder of my time here in the hostel I’m at. I also got a public transport card so I can use public transport for a week and make the city a little bit less safe.

Today I’ll just hang around town and maybe visit a submarine that’s docked at the harbor. For the rest of the week I don’t have any plans yet but I figure I’ll take it easy and get some rest. :-o (=yawn smiley)

Alcatraz

The visit to Alcatraz was nice. The entire island seems inhabited by seagulls and everywhere you look things are covered in a little layer of bird shit.

Today I also returned by car to the rental agency. I notices that during my trip I accumulated quite a large amount of souvenirs. :-(

Bike

Today I rented a bike and found out the hard way that San Fransisco really is not a good city to explore with a bike. Man, I was devastated by bicycling up and down the hills. After the biking adventure I got a nice burrito to eat and this burrito contained so much filling it seemed like two meals. At night I had dinner at a Macy’s and had an original homemade hamburger that contained about a kilo of meat. :-r…

Cablecar

Today I went on a nice tour in a cable car. It is the most typical method of transportation in San Fransisco and a means of transport that is almost exclusively used by the tourists. At the beginning there are long lines of tourists waiting for the cable cars, they board the cable car and then the cable car cruises through SF until everyone get off at the end point.

Yesterday and earlier today I was improving my German. I met a group of Germans and some people from Austria and we spend yesterday night in some dark park drinking a few bottles of alcohol. Today we also went and see the sites together. We already arranged a visit to Holland so I can show them the sites there and eat some typical cake.

Tour!

Yesterday I did a nice tour of San Fransisco and this was a really cool tour. The van was a total wreck with texts written all over the inside by other people that were on previous tours. Both inside and outside that was a lot of rust and after driving through San Fransisco for about an hour one of the cars windows was almost falling out!

After seeing some of the houses of the rich and famous we had some time off to walk around. We decided to go and look for the home of Charles Manson, a famous serial killer that according to the guide lived in the neighborhood. Well, nobody could help us and regardless who we asked either they didn’t know anything about the famous Charles or were to stoned understand the question or to answer it.