Everything . . . It's What's For Dinner

Dinner at Blauw in Utrecht, NL

Tonight we had dinner at Blauw in Utrecht, an Indonesian restaurant.  This was a first for us.  The restaurant was recommended by Jamie’s yoga instructor so she made a reservation and off we went on this Friday night.  The place was upscale but relaxed and as we are finding out, most restaurants are casual when it comes to dress code.  Looking around we saw that most people had all these little plates stacked in front of them.  Looking at the menu (in english!) we gathered that they all ordered rice plates, an assortment of small plates.  So we decided to order two rice plates, one with meat and the other with fish.  Well, they brought some plates, then some more, then even more!  What you see in the image above is the full monty . . . our dinner order.  It was overwhelming to say the least and there was barely enough room to fit our plates on the table.  The food was outstanding!  So many flavors and many we hadn’t had before.  We just about finished everything!  We can’t wait to take family and friends to this place.  In fact, if you check out their website, they show pictures of the patrons when their food is served.  For the next few days, check out the images for Friday the 28th of January!

Speaking Another Language

A really great thing about the Netherlands, or at least here in Utrecht and Amsterdam, is that most people speak english.  This is good since my Dutch is almost non-existant.  However, I find enough similarity between Dutch and German that I recognize many words but sentence structure escapes me right now.  But there’s another language here that requires just as much study.  It’s called the metric system.  Roads are measured in kilometers, gas/drinks in liters, and food such as meat and cheese in kilograms.  Then there’s conversion of US dollars to Euros to get a sense of my overall cost.  So, when in the grocery store and you want to buy a pound of meat for dinner you're looking for something that’s just over 450 grams (453.592 gms to be exact).  Then you factor in the price (Euros/Kg) and convert to the dollar just to get a sense of price/lb.  Same with gas which is quite expensive here.  1.50 Euros/Liter x 3.785 Liters/gal x 1.3 dollars/euro = $7.38/gal.  Hmmm, Maybe I should just leave the calculator alone!

It's All Relative

Well, all good things must come to an end.  My work permit arrived and so it was off to do what I came here for . . . so posting to this blog daily just won't happen!

That doesn’t mean I can’t find evening time to go out and shoot a little.  So far there’s been more rain than sun but when the sun comes out, it’s wonderful.  First, it’s quite a bit warmer than Milwaukee, especially now as the temp there dips below zero Farenheit.  Here it actually cooled down a bit but still reached a relatively balmy 40F.  We’re settling into routines and I think I found my preferred route to the office although as the temperatures climb, I’ll consider biking to work not on my racing bike but on a Dutch classic.  I hear there are shops where you can find a second hand bike.  Just as well as bike trading (stealing) is part of the folk lore here.  It’s been said that if you’re standing in front of a group of cyclists and say, ‘Hey that’s my bike’, half of those people will drop the bike they’re on and walk away!