Amsterdam!
V and I spent the last few days in Amsterdam; V's sister is doing a Genocide Studies MA there and we wanted to visit. It was fun!
The apartment was pretty large and, unlike the last time we stayed in Amsterdam, actually had doors. I got to go to the science centre, NEMO, which I'd missed out on last time, and it was as fun as I'd remembered from my school trip aged ~16 - chairs where you could pull yourself up to see how pulleys work! A roof terrace! Sitting on a chair holding a bicycle wheel to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum!
On Sunday we went to Artis Zoo, which was great - we got there in time for the sea lion feeding and I took lots of video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIsccBlhdRY&feature=youtu.be). I also gave €2 to help turn the car park into an expanded elephant sanctuary. (I know zoos are questionable as a concept, but this one is apparently pretty well known for not having restrictive cages? Also they take part in Europe-wide endangered elephant breeding programmes.)
We also went to the Resistance Museum. One of the exhibits was on the wartime experience of the Dutch East Indies, which I knew very little about - it was occupied by Japan and then, after the war, was embroiled in a violent Indonesian nationalist uprising.
One of the few downsides of the trip was that my Macbook screen was damaged in transit - it was a six-year-old model I mostly got to test the software I write (so I can still use it for that, with an external screen), and I have other laptops, but it's still a shame. I've treated myself to a Dell Latitude E7240 to replace it (full HD touchscreen! Only 1.3kg! Carbon fibre body!) and that should arrive tomorrow - I did a double shift of cooking this evening so I have all of tomorrow free to set it up.
The apartment was pretty large and, unlike the last time we stayed in Amsterdam, actually had doors. I got to go to the science centre, NEMO, which I'd missed out on last time, and it was as fun as I'd remembered from my school trip aged ~16 - chairs where you could pull yourself up to see how pulleys work! A roof terrace! Sitting on a chair holding a bicycle wheel to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum!
On Sunday we went to Artis Zoo, which was great - we got there in time for the sea lion feeding and I took lots of video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIsccBlhdRY&feature=youtu.be). I also gave €2 to help turn the car park into an expanded elephant sanctuary. (I know zoos are questionable as a concept, but this one is apparently pretty well known for not having restrictive cages? Also they take part in Europe-wide endangered elephant breeding programmes.)
We also went to the Resistance Museum. One of the exhibits was on the wartime experience of the Dutch East Indies, which I knew very little about - it was occupied by Japan and then, after the war, was embroiled in a violent Indonesian nationalist uprising.
One of the few downsides of the trip was that my Macbook screen was damaged in transit - it was a six-year-old model I mostly got to test the software I write (so I can still use it for that, with an external screen), and I have other laptops, but it's still a shame. I've treated myself to a Dell Latitude E7240 to replace it (full HD touchscreen! Only 1.3kg! Carbon fibre body!) and that should arrive tomorrow - I did a double shift of cooking this evening so I have all of tomorrow free to set it up.