a prophetic voice-

It's hard to believe but I am back home again, after three weeks of travel, each day marked by something new and special and wonderful...perfect weather (needed the umbrella only once, for about an hour, in Amsterdam); memorable people; fantastic food; glorious places; and a storehouse of memories to sort through in the days and weeks and months to come. When I inserted the memory card (lovely name, isn't it?) from the camera into my computer and began downloading photos, I discovered that I had 731 pictures. Of course, some I had already erased as redundant or woefully out-of-focus, and some I will erase as I go through them yet again, but right now I have 731 reminders of the adventures of the past three weeks...memory triggers all, to keep ever mindful the sounds and sights and smells and feel of the places we visited, of the people we met, of the celebration of life which was this journey. While I promise I will not burden you, the reader, with all 731, today...this aft...

What an absolutely great city for those of us who like to walk! Leaving our B&B at 8:30 this morning, we finally stopped for lunch at 1:00p.m., after walking around the Jordaan area, visiting an incredible outdoor market, seeing lovely canal houses and houseboats, and being surprised and delighted by several courtyard gardens in the center of apartment complexes composed of houses built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch, you see, are a thrifty people, valuing the preservation of buildings whose only "fault" is being old. They remodel and update the interiors, while retaining the character and integrity of the original structure, resulting in extremely livable habitations which have a character all their own. Lovely, truly lovely.  Today was absolutely gorgeous, in spite of the fact the it began with a temperature of 37 degrees- that's Fahrenheit, not Celsius, understand. The first hour or so of our walk made me glad for scarf and gloves, but by...