Mar 16 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #9

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 8:07 pm

For anyone new to the blog, this post is a continuation of photos taken in Amsterdam around my birthday in 2008. Irina booked a holiday there, and came with me again 🙂

Anyway, following the boat ride, we decided to try out one form of the cycle-powered taxi services available, to take us towards Vondel Park, and specifically the Blue Teahouse (Blauwe Theehuis ??? need to go and double check the spelling). As we zoomed along (I felt sorry for the man powering the machine when we had to stop and then start again at traffic lights on the occasional incline you’ll find, with my bulk on his machine), Ira spotted a most unusual modified bicycle, and we asked the owner if he could slow down for half a minute to enable us to grab a quick photo. In other cities, perhaps my Britishness would have prevent me from attempting such an intrusion in another person’s life, but this was Amsterdam, and I don’t think you ride something like this if you particularly want to be incognito 🙂

Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina

This was, I assume, some sort of bandstand in Vondelpark, and if you want to see more pictures, and are viewing this from the front page, you’ll need to click the link just below this photo 🙂
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
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Mar 11 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #8

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 1:34 pm

This is the last of the afternoon boat trip photos, taken as we entered one of the red light districts. Obviously taking shots here can lead to security guys attempting to politely remind you that the canal is deep and dirty, and your camera wouldn’t last long it, so once I realised we weren’t just skirting the edges of the area, I put the camera away.

Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
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Mar 04 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #7

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 5:39 pm

Here we have a continuation of the photos from our first of two St Nicholas boat club trips. As we approached this low bridge, we all assumed we were just going to use the area preceeding it as a turning circle. A few eyebrows were raised as we carried on in a straight line, not seeming to slow down at all…
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
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Feb 27 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #6

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 3:53 pm

In an attempt to not scare off my readers who don’t particularly want to see baby posts all the time, I’ll try to continue the posts from before. Here we are back in Amsterdam 2008 again, when Ira and I went over for my birthday. This is the first boat trip we went on with the not for profit St Nicholas boat club organization. We later went on an evening tour, to get a feel for the city from the waterways whilst it was dark.
We had a great captain who took us around, and unlike the large plexiglass covered tourist boats, we were able to fit into much narrower canals, take a peek in areas not normally toured around and even… well, you’ll just have to wait until the next post for information on where we went that had us hitting the deck!

Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina

As ever, click the link below to see a lot more pictures – if I display them all on the front page, the site would take a long time for everyone to load up.

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Feb 17 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #5

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 2:22 pm

OK, so with these photos, it is still April 20 2008, we have arrived in Amsterdam (finally, after connecting flight problems from Kazakhstan the day before), we’ve met some very nice people (fellow Amsterdam forum members) who helped chill me out the day before, and even grouped together to get me a birthday present (I’ll give you one guess 😉 ), found our apartment, been for a walk, and it is now 4.20pm on 4/20 (US date style) , and we’re heading to the 420 cafe to meet up with fellow forum members.
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
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Feb 13 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #4

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 9:29 pm

I am trying to post these in something resembling logical batches, so here we have what happened after we arrived. Having been given a birthday present at the airport, I managed to resist the urge to roll something immediately and took a few shots of the flat (see previous post) before it got too messed up.
Amsterdam Holland Chris Merriman Irina
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Feb 11 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #3

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 10:34 pm

So by this time we have obviously arrived in the apartment. I took a few snaps of the place for future use (a proper review on the place will be in a separate post sometime. Given the amount of time it has taken to get these photos up, I’d not hold your breath 🙂 ). In the mean time, you can check out his site over here.
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Feb 11 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos #2

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 1:25 am

Here we have landed a day late in Amsterdam, and met a couple of fellow forum visitors. Birthday presents were given, and this day seemed to be going a lot better than the day before, and it wasn’t even midday yet! We hopped on a tram to the general area of the apartment, and used GPS for the last few minutes walk. The last shot was how the rest of the world looked once we had arrived inside the flat and met the nice man Paul.
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Feb 10 2009

Amsterdam 2008 Photos – Finally

Category: Amsterdam,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 9:23 pm

Before my life is taken over my nappies, changing mats & cute shoes, I wanted to try and catch up with tasks in real life, and bits I’d never quite got to finishing on the blog. So, here are the first of some Amsterdam April 2008 shots.
As you may remember from my ramblings at the time, a problem with flights had meant we missed the last connection from Frankfurt to Amsterdam on the 19th by mere minutes.
Anyway, we grabbed a couple of hours of sleep in a nearby hotel, got up for my Birthday and decided we would try and make today run a little better. A beautiful sight of some bunnies frolicking on the lawn below our window. Glad of the few hours rest we’d had, we got ready and headed to the airport for the first flight out Amsterdam. We were NOT going to be missing the 4.20pm meet on 4/20 at the coffeeshop 420 🙂
Anyway, more of that later, have these as a taster of the posts to come. I’ll try and put up the ones from 2007 later, with Chris and Alex…
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