Titchy in Amsterdam (and London)
Titchy in Heathrow Terminal 5.
September saw a double whammy of trips, with four days in Amsterdam, getting home for one night, then off to London for another couple of days.
Titchy Bear thought it was brilliant though!
We flew from Terminal 5 at Heathrow, and Titchy had to say hello to her more expensive cousins.
She had a ride on one of the toy cars
And made some more bear friends.
Dinner was soup with dumplings before the flight.
The hotel was very nice - I got upgraded to a suite, with a hug bath tub. You could even watch telly from the bath - and I did!
The rest of the suite.Unfortunately I only was in it for two nights before having to move to another, smaller room (which was nice too, to be fair!)
The hotel is a fashion hotel, which means the decor is a bit strange in places. These are the doors to the loos in the lobby.
The meeting venue was in a theatre, next to a lake, with this fountain in it.
The view from the suite's balcony.
In the hotel lobby. There were quite a few manequins around the place.
Just around the corner from the meeting venue (de Meervaart theatre), was a plaza with statues of gambolling lambs.
Titchy wanted to ride one.
Watching one of the presentations.
At the evening reception, there was a lady with an organ that played music according to hole punch cards.
The lamps in the hotel dining room were manequins too. With lampshades for heads. It's fashion, obviously.
The conference had its own cartoonist, who was doing themed cartoons all about data.
And this is Miss Gerry, who's job it was to organise us all and make sure we got into the sessions and stuff. She also ran the entertainments at the conference dinner.
Titchy liked the little cakes we had one coffee break.
The conference dinner was held in a restaurant on the beach at the North Sea. Some of the delegates even went swimming, despite it being really cold!. The dinner itself was a ok, but it took us an hour to drive to the venue on the bus, and there wasn't really enough space for everyone to have a seat. There was plenty of food, but bits of it kept running out at odd moments, and the queues for the buffet tables were huge. So, not the best conference do I've been to!
We had a bit of time to kill at the airport, so Titchy posed with some tulips - Amsterdam being famous for tulips after all.
We didn't buy any cheese, though I was tempted.
And Titchy was very disappointed that she couldn't have these clogs to use as a bed.
She did like meeting Miffy though.
And seeing the decorated elephants. (You could get a kit to decorate your own elephant, but we really don't have the space for an elephant.)
The London conference was held at the Wellcome collection, so of course we had to have a tour around the galleries there.
Selfie!
Next to a model boat - Titchy said it made her feel like a giant!
Looking at a model of all the bits inside our bodies. Titchy was quite glad she's full of stuffing, rather than all those strange, gooey looking things.
In the gift shop you could buy giant microbes for things like the common cold, and other, nastier diseases.
Here is a hard copy printout of the entire human genome. 140 books...
...filled with very small text!
There were severak giant jelly babies in the building. I don't know why - probably because Art.
And this creature guarded the door to the lecture theatre, in a fierce, yet slightly goofy way.
And that was Amsterdam and London!