sometimes it's good to be social
Aug. 6th, 2007 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyThis last weekend was the first real nice summer weekend we've had in the Netherlands this year so far. Friday evening Olivier hosted a small farewell dinner for Eric, whose two year post-doc position has come to an end and who is returning to the US on Thursday. Olivier's apartment has a gorgeous rooftop terrace which is usually host to at least a couple of departmental BBQs over the course of a summer, but this was actually the first time it was nice enough it. He and Hannah put together a scrumptuous pot of couscous and vegetables, Joel and I brought a bottle of red wine and the second bottle of retsina that we'd bought in Athens, and Leigh and Jill brought fresh cherries and grapes and organic chocolate for dessert. It was a real nice night, even though by the time we biked home it was nearly 12:45, and by the time we got to bed it was 1:30. Normally that's not so bad on a Friday night, but I'd made plans to meet ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anja13 at the airport Saturday morning because she had a few hour lay-over, so my alarm was set for 7:30am!
I had a delightful time meetinganja13. It's always so nice when someone you've known via email and LJ turns out to be even nicer in person. We stopped at the food court in the airport and had some breakfast, and then, since there was still quite a bit of time before her next flight and I hadn't had time on Friday to go looking for a few things she'd hope to be able to pick up, we took the train back into Amsterdam and walked down the Damrak for awhile, poking our heads into various shops (and she found everything she was looking for and more), and generally marveling at the fact that at 10:30am, it was already warm enough that jeans and a long-sleeved shirt were too hot! It was beautiful. After I dropped her back off at the train station and lazily took my own train back home (it's only a 25 min. walk from central station to home, but it's ~7 from the Muiderpoort station, and my ticket was technically good for a round-trip from the airport to the Muiderpoort station), where I cheerfully dug out one of the new dresses I'd picked up in the States but it hadn't been warm enough here to wear.
I took a nap in the early afternoon, and when I woke up I suggested to Joel that we go out to the market; we wanted to get some tomatos to stuff (mmm, that's dinner tonight!), plus we'd recently had to throw another bowl away so we were down to just three and wanted to pick up some more, and we'd recently mistakenly bought mayonnaise based garlic sauce instead of yoghurt based garlic sauce -- I don't eat mayonnaise, but Joel had said that the sauce would be excellent with fries, so we figured we'd get some from the market. That was just a lovely excursion, so nice to be out shopping for fresh fruits and veggies in the sun and warmth and top it off with some really excellent fries. A good weekend.
anja13 at the airport Saturday morning because she had a few hour lay-over, so my alarm was set for 7:30am!I had a delightful time meeting
anja13. It's always so nice when someone you've known via email and LJ turns out to be even nicer in person. We stopped at the food court in the airport and had some breakfast, and then, since there was still quite a bit of time before her next flight and I hadn't had time on Friday to go looking for a few things she'd hope to be able to pick up, we took the train back into Amsterdam and walked down the Damrak for awhile, poking our heads into various shops (and she found everything she was looking for and more), and generally marveling at the fact that at 10:30am, it was already warm enough that jeans and a long-sleeved shirt were too hot! It was beautiful. After I dropped her back off at the train station and lazily took my own train back home (it's only a 25 min. walk from central station to home, but it's ~7 from the Muiderpoort station, and my ticket was technically good for a round-trip from the airport to the Muiderpoort station), where I cheerfully dug out one of the new dresses I'd picked up in the States but it hadn't been warm enough here to wear.I took a nap in the early afternoon, and when I woke up I suggested to Joel that we go out to the market; we wanted to get some tomatos to stuff (mmm, that's dinner tonight!), plus we'd recently had to throw another bowl away so we were down to just three and wanted to pick up some more, and we'd recently mistakenly bought mayonnaise based garlic sauce instead of yoghurt based garlic sauce -- I don't eat mayonnaise, but Joel had said that the sauce would be excellent with fries, so we figured we'd get some from the market. That was just a lovely excursion, so nice to be out shopping for fresh fruits and veggies in the sun and warmth and top it off with some really excellent fries. A good weekend.
