This blog was created for all our family and friends who want to follow us on our travels.

Our next trip is to the USA - and we'll be doing a 5 week trip to: (in order): San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle/Redmond, Washington D.C., Tampa, FL, New York City, Phoenix, AZ and Honolulu, Hawaii.

As you can see, that's a fair number of places to travel to in five weeks!

And of course, since Yumi and I are budding photographers - we'll be taking lots of photos along the way - and the best place to read about our travels, and see our photos - is right here.

Click Here to See More Photos of the USA!


Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Delft, Netherlands


New Church
Originally uploaded by radix999
So, my first day in Delft was fun.
Spent most of the day at Oqapi, checking out the offices, settling in and chatting with Joeri.
He showed me a couple of websites he was working on and we discussed my plans for my two sabbatical weeks with him.
I also had a chance to meet the ProcoliX guys who work next door (Oqapi and Procolix were once the same company,
but they split up at the start of the year as they wanted to head off in different ways)
We all had lunch at the nearby TU Delft cafeteria together and Koen, Bart and Ton from ProcoliX and we all had a chat about WebGUI: both its merits and it's weaknesses.
After that it was back to Oqapi again and I made a start on the planning stages of my WebGUI solution for our database sync issue.
I discussed the problem with Joeri and he agreed with my approach to write it as a workflow activity (which can be run as scheduled tasks
inside WebGUI) and I made a start on the basic structure in pseudo-code.

After that, Joeri drove me to my hotel so I could check-in and get settled. He offered to lend me a bike for the time I'm here - which I can use to ride to the office each day and also do a bit of touring around Delft with in my own time.
He said he'd bring it tomorrow and we could ride in together as that is how he normally gets to work also. We agreed to meet at 8.30am and get an early start.

The room at the Soul Inn is small and cozy, with a little sink in the room and two single beds. The toilet and showers are shared amongst the rooms and breakfast is provided each morning. Simple, but I don't really need much more than that.

It was going on 5pm by the time I'd settled in, but the sun was still shining outside and was looking like a lovely evening - I still had some energy left, so thought I'd go wander into the heart of Delft, grab some dinner and exhaust myself so I could get a good nights sleep.
So off I went with my camera on my back and jumper around my waist in case it got cold later.
Delft is a lovely place, with cobblestone paths everywhere, lots of cyclists and a cheery atmosphere to it. The heart of Delft seems to be based around three lovely churches.
After deviating briefly to take a few photos of the nearby train (which coincidentally will take me to Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and other places easily) and the first Windmill I came across - I headed in to the heart of Delft.
Quaint little shops everywhere, selling everything from the classic blue Delftware pottery, wooden clogs, to medicine - Apotheek is the local name for a Pharmacist.
After wandering around for a while the shops started closing and I decided to stop for some dinner. I didn't feel too hungry, so just grabbed a light meal - but decided to go for something typically Dutch.
So I ordered a large glass of Heinekin, a ham and cheese tosti (toasted sandwich) - the tosti wasn't quite filling enough in the end tho - so I ordered a plate of Poffertjes (bite sized pancakes) with icecream and chocolate sauce on top. Yum!
I headed back to my room after that, had a nice warm shower and got an early night (about 8.30pm) - it was still very light outside.

Next morning, I awoke about 5am - after determining that there was no chance of me going back to sleep I decided to watch some tv for a bit then had a shower and had a wander outside. The owner of the Soul Inn was making breakfast, so I had a chance to ask her about the wireless connection to the room. She gave me the key, but said I might not get much reception in my room as the wireless was at he other end of the house, but I can always sit in the lounge if I need to.

She had prepared a lovely breakfast, and I filled myself with cereal, yoghurt, a warm chocolate filled pastry and a warm bun with ham and cheese in it.
Joeri arrived at 8.30am with a bike for me and we rode in to work - it's a beautiful sunny day today so I enjoyed the ride in.

2 comments:

shades2 said...

Have a nice Dutch beer for me. :)

Anonymous said...

wow!! looks like you had a big big breakfast!! :P
kZ