that somewhere in the world they are experiencing summer weather. It is not here. It is grey, chilly and rainy again today. Which is prime weather for writing a book or reading one. I am just glad it was still dry this morning when I went to my banjo lesson. While I carry my banjo in a case on my back like some sort of broken down cowboy, rain is generally not good for it. Tonight I am going to a bluegrass performance in Utrecht. It does not look like we will be sitting outside listening like we did last year.

I have goosebumps at the moment, thanks to the weather. This is why I haven’t yet turned off the radiators for the year. I transplanted my tomatoes to outside over the weekend, thinking the weather was finally warm enough at night for them to be out. Of course, the first nights I was still covering them up with cardboard. Until it started raining and the cardboard became messy.

Yesterday, we went to the Hermitage Museum to see the Napoleon, Josephine and Alexander exhibit. Since convincing Marjo to get a museum year card, we’ve started competing in the Olympic sport of museumgoing. I liked the second exhibit more, Holland in the Golden Age. It made an interesting case for how modern day Amsterdam and the Netherlands came to be. Especially interesting was the idea that nothing could disturb trade hence the religious freedoms that were found here, the basis for the tolerance, the social care systems, etc. It also talked about the dark parts of the history, that even with slavery illegal inside the Netherlands, the Dutch were responsible for transporting 575000 people from Africa to the US for the purposes of slavery.

I never made it to the Rollende Keukens festival but that is okay. My taste buds aren’t completely working yet so if it isn’t really spicy food, it is just kind of blah right now. I hope this resolves before Wednesday evening since I have plans to go to Betty’s, the well known vegetarian restaurant! We went to De Vliegende Schotel over the weekend. Luckily, he cooks with alot of spice power so I could taste it. It was really good. The only unusual thing were the people at the table next to us. One of them was not wearing shoes. Fine if you live in the wide open country but I would think that walking around barefoot in Amsterdam is not the smartest thing.

Time to make some tea and see if I can convince myself that this weather is really 65 degrees and sunny 😉