Running, Yarn, and Beer in Amsterdam

I haven't been able to blog for a while, because I've been away in Amsterdam!  It was fantastic.  Everyone spoke English well enough, and since I can read English and German, I could read Dutch well enough that we got around just fine.

We had a general idea of what we wanted to do, but we were so tired that we only accomplished half of it.  I guess we'll just have to go back!

This picture is in front of the Rijksmuseum.  We didn't go into this particular museum, but we had to see the I Amsterdam sign.  It's also just a couple hundred meters from the Van Gogh Museum, which we did go into.  He only painted for a few years, but he managed to produce enough to fill an entire museum.  I have never been so impressed by a painting of a pile of potatoes.

Can't even make fun of everyone in front of the I Amsterdam sign, because we were there, too.

And of course I had to stop in an adorable yarn shop, Penelope Craft.  They had plenty of Madelinetosh, Malabrigo, and Cascade, but I can get those anywhere.  What I was really after were Loret Karman's yarns, which she dyes in Amsterdam!

 

We also took a tour of the Heineken Brewery.  The first half was very neat.  We got to look at all the copper vats that the beer brews in, split some barley, play with the dry ingredients, and taste the warm water and barley stage.  The second half was just a gigantic advertisement.

I also went running, of course!  I ran twice, once for six miles and once for eight, and I felt really good.  I'm very glad, because I had started to worry that my shin pain was compartment syndrome instead of just plain old shin splints.  I have no desire to have surgery on my legs now or any time in the future, so I'm relieved that there was no pain at all on either of those runs.  My times were also pretty good, since the city is so flat.  I ran mainly through the Rembrandtpark (which was near where we stayed) and the Vondelpark (which is on every "Running in Amsterdam" list).  I also learned that Dutch dogs are not as disciplined as German dogs.  Both parks were full of Dutch people looking and calling for their dogs, and I saw one tiny dog bite a man's leg.