london is WICKED

we are currently staying with our friends diana and nick in london. diana is a mad scientist. we were privileged to visit her at her prestigious london lab.

after feeling signifigant solidarity with diana at work, kylie is thinking of taking up a career as a mad scientist as well. she is already half way there... now she just has to become a scientist. (note the other scientists; this lab is so prestigious that their hiring is limited purely to juvenile geniuses and midgets)

the closest of many lovely fields behind nick and diana's house.

yesterday we wandered around central london. kylie is already practicing for her new career.
thank you miss phillipines.

we spent the afternoon at the london science museum. seriously fun stuff and absolutely free. this was taken with a thermal camera. those are NOT my hand prints on kylie.
this is a representation of the amount of (mostly derelict) satellites currently orbiting the earth.
here is kylie looking slightly surprised at her somewhat lewd bubble.


a 6 second video featuring the creation of the above bubbles.

finally and most excitingly for kylie, last night we went to see the musical "wicked" in london's westend. it was, in a word, wicked. the singing and stagecraft was incredible, and the script, while departing signifigantly from the plot of the book by gregory maguire, was hilarious.
kylie anticipating.
i found this picture online that someone must have taken illegally from our exact seats! i am not big on musicals, but this one was seriously good.

this picture is for fraser. remember, roken is dodelijk.

nick and diana have been treating us very well, and we are excited about another 2 days with them. after that we will be back in lethbridge in 3 days!!! aaaaaaahhhh!!!!!

mister multiple miniscule molten motes

last night we arrived back in holland after a long weekend in sunndalsor, a small fjordial norwegian town, with our good friend fraser as our guide. it has been over a year since we have seen him and the four days in trondheim and three days in sunndalsor passed too quickly.

we embarked on a nice snowy hike on saturday to explore the fjord, as much as you can explore a 40km winding waterfilled rocky snow covered chasm in one day.




kylie, being the shortest one with the stretchiest pants, encountered some difficulties but pushed through it to survive without injury despite multiple falls.

after saying goodbye to fraser we caught the night train at one am, to arrive in oslo bright and early at 6:00 after a couple hours of sort of sleep in a train seat. with the help of a lot of coffee we had a look around oslo for the day before catching the late evening flight back to amsterdam.


this is the vikingskipshuset which houses 3 excavated viking longships that were used as tombs.

oslo is a beautiful city with numerous statues and monuments. they seem to have quite a fixation on nudity for such a cold country.

from the main chamber of olso´s radhus, or city hall, where the nobel peace prize is awarded every year.

norway has the strongest currency in the world and in oslo we bought our only restaurant meal in our entire time in the country. this is kylie´s $18 belgian waffle before she has even taken a bite. my meal was a bit more substantial but also substantially more expensive. we were thankful for the hospitality of fraser´s supervisor and family, as well as for our cabin kitchen in sundalsor where we made pasta and tikki masala and copious quantities of tea and hot chocolate.

now we are once again in soest but are heading to london tomorrow to see our friend diana. the final leg of our journey! in less than a week we will be back in canada. crazy! we are not yet ready to quit travelling but on the flip side we are excited about going home.

trondheim

Who wouldn't love Belgium?

Belgium has very interesting, bright, multicolored and trippy modern architecture everywhere. It is an excellent mix of old (1300-1900) and new and is paralleled by the new, yet old (and awful!!!!) 80's fashions that are coming back into style.

This building gave a light show at night and would alternate between these lovely rainbow colours and a crazy purple lightshow. At the main square in city centre where we ate ice cream, waffles and chocolate. But wait . . . I am getting ahead of myself.
PLEASE PLEASE tell me that this is only the fasion in Europe and no one in Canada is wearing these absolutely ridiculous colours and outfits.

We walked through this park and were very perplexed by these trees. Our theory is that they have pruned the tree and then made the grid in between to encourage a two dimensional fence tree. We really want to see a picture of what it looks like in the summer. Any other ideas?

One of the best things about Belgium was the lovely and hospitable Germans who brought us right to the train station to see us off. This was on our last day with Sonja and Christian when we drove (210 km\hr!!) to a smaller town outside Koln to explore.

Lastly the main reason to love Belgium is the CHOCOLATE!!!! It is so tasty and creamy and just generally all around deliciously decadent. We ate A LOT of chocolate in our day and a half in Belguim along with our waffles and ice cream. Thankfully we have also been doing a lot of walking so we don't have anything to show for it yet!

Yes this is a store with large bowls of bulk chocolate, and this was only one of three sections!
We have arrived in Norway and have spent the day hanging out with Fraser!! We will keep you posted on our journeys in the land of ever changing weather. We experienced three separate blizzards and two lovely sunny days today!

too much for one post

i am sorry that we not been keeping you as informed as you have become accustomed. there has just been too much going on lately, and we have been staying with friends, which has the combined effect of giving us less free time and also less desire to sit in an internet cafe and recount our adventures.

previously we were staying in soest, netherlands, with arjan's parents rob and esther. after resting with them for a week or so we journeyed to amsterdam and stayed with our new friends bart and sanne. unfortunately we once again forgot to take a good picture of them, but bart took us on a sweet bike tour of amsterdam (kylie only hit one person) and to a few local pub/restaurants.
some friendly soestian equinarians. soest was a great place to rest. the city is layed out like many dutch cities with each square of houses (pretty high density) arrayed around their own park. most lots are only accessible by road on one side, with the inside space being bike/pedestrian access only. all these areas are connected by an efficient network of bike lanes running alongside or entirely independant of the motorways. amazing urban planning.

canal shots in amsterdam. this city is so beautiful, but we could never live there b/c nobody in the city centre has any yardspace at all.


now we are in köln germany, or cologne in english.... famous for the water of cologne, used to mask bad odours. incidentally it doesnt smell very good.
german wildlife.

we are staying with our friends sonja, christian and jonas. they are providing amazing hospitality and showing us a fantastic time in köln. we have accompanied jonas (3) on bike rides
received a tour of city hall where sonja and christian were married.
and played in multiple parks... we are a bit unsure of what we are not allowed to do. we're pretty sure we arent allowed to roast pigs, or perhaps cats. and not allowed to wear helmets and climb ladders? help us out here!

köln is also home to the dom, above, the biggest cathedral in germany. we climbed to the top of the tower and frolikd in da glockenspiel.

today we all went to the chocolate museum where we learned about history, life cycle, manufacturing, branding, advertising and yes even taste of chocolate.
jonas loves chocolate.
sonja also loves chocolate... eat it quick before mom gets it!
i also quite like chocolate and milka in particular, but am slightly distrusful of lilac cows.

tomorrow we say goodbye to our friends and head to brussels, belgium. i am particularly excited about all the brussel sprouts.

arjan's house

many of our readers know arjan and i am sure you will be excited to see his new house (or condo as we would call it in canada). he has embarked on major renovations and we arrived just in time to see the end result.

the spacious bedroom

the fancy kitchen, custom made in germany (the drawers close themselves and all the appliances are hidden)
warm livingroom with a great view and a big comfy couch on order.

arjan's canadian corner

and finally, the highlight of the home... the bathroom, featuring in ceiling speakers and dimmable lights.
highlight of the highlights: designer 4 head shower!

sweet place arjan. thanks for the hospitality!