Day 10 Shelley's Presentation A Triumph! June 25, 2008

Shelley was great!
She gave her keynote address today at 1:30 p.m. at the University of Utrecht, the largest university in The Netherlands. It's the COSL Conference, put on by the Open University of the Netherlands.
The previous speaker was German and reported on his very minute research to prove that people who use on-line chat in their schoolwork learn more. He was extremely scientific, but dry. Shel says many people there will be glad for his research, so they can quote him. I almost fell asleep.
Shelley's keynote address was a definite wake up! Her Powerpoint presentation slides were colorful, and she was friendly and entertaining. Her slides, in accordance with their philosophy of open, free internet everything which this organization espouses, are all available online for free. She seemed extremely confident and happy. Everyone there enjoyed it, and lots came up after to tell her how great she did.
I'm on a 15 minute computer and I have to post this before it quits!
Aha! I got another free 15 minutes from the hotel desk clerk! Great!
The hall where she presented seats about 500, and probably 300 people were there. It's all extremely modern, with a huge screen, maybe 15 feet high and 40 feet long, to show whatever you want from your computer. She looked really good standing up there, talking into the microphone and switching her slides on the screen. It was a good venue for her style, because the walls are wood and the seats are all different colors, sloping up to the sound booth at the top. In the picture you see the foyer outside the hall. The sound booth is on the left. It's a really cool-looking sound command center, because it is shaped the the blimp Hindenburg and it's made of little strips of wood and it projects from both inside and outside walls of the auditorium.
After her address they presented her with a picture book of the Netherlands and some great chocolates. We went outside and sat in a quiet place by some trees and just let her decompress. Then, of course, she went back to work to edit her article she's publishing.
I, of course, went back to town for more sightseeing!

Day 9 Utrecht; June 24, 2008

What a glorious day! Blue sky and a breeze and an old city to explore is my idea of a great time!







Our hotel is a hundred year old building right in the center of the old town, directly across from the very oldest church. It started as a monastery over a thousand years ago.


First order of business was figure out how to get to the place where Shelley's conference is. I went with her just to see, so I can go on my own later. It's a number of bus stops away, at a huge modern university complex. The building with the conference is ultra-modern fabulous architecture with curved walls and ramps up instead of stairs.

This conference is way cool for her to be a keynote speaker. She will present in a big auditorium at 1:30 Wednesday, which is in 2 hours but is 3:30 A.M. your time!

Shel wanted to take a couple of hours just to sight-see, so we came back and wandered the town. Then she returned to the conference and locked herself into her friend's office to work on an article they will joint publish. We set up a meeting time for 6:00, which gave her 4 hours to work.
Meanwhile, I entertained myself walking around the old town. It has quaint canals and tall skinny buildings right out of the 1600's right next to modern steel and glass structure. The streets and canals are lined with chestnut and sycamore and linden trees. The fragrance of the lindens is in the air and it's lovely!

Bicycles are the main mode of transport. Everyone rides them; businessmen with briefcases, old ladies with their shopping baskets, students wearing i-pods. There are literally tousands of them everywhere! There is a two-tier sidewalk system. The outer area is for pedestrians, the next sidewalk is for bicycles, and then there's the street. Look very carefully before crossing, because you'll get mowed down by another silent bicycle!

I have a new favorite building. It's this library I'm in right now, typing away to you on the internet. On the street level there are the usual shops, but there is a door with a small sign that says "Ütrecht bibliotek" and a door that leads into the innards of the building. Upstairs, the building is huge and several stories. It's a modern library with a central atrium on the top 3 floors of a small city block. A cute little pregnant lady showed me how to buy a voucher from the machine to get a code to get on the internet. Internet is only €2 and hour here, but at the hotel it's €10. There is even a snack area up here. It's kind of like being at Barnes and Noble, but with really modern architecture in an old building!

Got to go, my time will run out in one minute!

Day 8 All Day Travel, Cinque Terre to Utrecht; June 23, 2008

How many different modes of travel can one person do in one crazy long day? We decided the number is TEN different legs, because that's what we did yesterday! 14 hours in transit, oh my heck we're tired!
This was our Monday:
1. Cinque Terre regional train to Sestri Levante
Lots and lots of tunnels, because the mountains drop right down to the sea, and the train wants to travel on the flat! Tunnel through every mountain. When we get an opening to the sea, it's glorious!
2. Sestri Levante to Genoa, regional train (read, slow and makes tons of stops)
Gorgeous views of the sea and the Italian Riviera. Lots of yachts on the smooth blue sea, purple bouganvilla and flat-topped pines, and sun-drenched houses of yellow, tan, pink, and coral hues all crammed together. Red tile roofs. Genoa is the home town of Christopher Columbus, and you can understand why he loved the sea. It is so beautiful here!
3. Genoa to Milan, faster IC train. Nice airline seats, everyone has a seat reservation.
Traveling north now, through open fields and small Italian workaday towns. We try to sleep sitting up facing strangers in the seats across from us. Hmm . . . not very successful.
4. We're in Milan, let's take this chance to go see the Milan Opera House! Maybe the greatest opera house in the world. In an 1880's building, with a lovely ballroom on the second floor similar to the Paris Opera House. We eavesdropped on a lady giving an English tour to a couple in the next box. Fabulous horseshoe shape, five tiers high, red velvet draped with gold. The stage area has all been redone to make it competitive with other worldwide opera venues. Stage area is as large as the audience, and can have 3 separate sets going at once. They have over 150 feet of fly space, meaning they can raise very tall sets up into the rafters with a touch of a button. For theater people, this is way cool. I really enjoyed it because I've heard about this place forever, and I finally got to go see it!
Took the Metro subway from the train station to downtown Milan.
5. Had lunch in a huge glassed atrium in the center of Milan. Right in the center, 80 feet to the ceiling, and we found the prime table. The stores facing us were Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and us. Guess where we ate? McDonald's! Absolutely prime real estate, the atmosphere was fabulous, and the price was right!
Did our spin on the testicles of the bull in center of the atrium. Supposed to bring good luck!
Dashed back past the white marble Milan Cathedral on our way to the Metro back to the train station.
6. Took a big shuttle bus from the station to the airport: the Malpensa Express. I like the jazzy velvet seats and the footrests! Stash your luggage underneath, this is like a tour bus.
7. Checked in for our EasyJet flight to Amsterdam. This was definitely not easy! The airport was packed, there was no place to sit, they changed our gate 3 times, and it's cattle car seating like Southwest airlines. AACK! They piled us all in low-slung busses to take us out to the plane.
8. Flight from Milan to Amsterdam. Quite pleasant, only 90 minutes. Shelley wanted the aisle and I wanted the window, so we got a great lady between us and yakked up a storm. She's from Utrecht and gave us can't-miss-it directions to our hotel. Well, we missed it. Anyway, she is a translator from German to Dutch, and she edits and translates for an auxiliary services health magazine.
9. VISA cards have given us grief this whole trip. Sometimes one of ours will work. I don't think it's really the fault of America First. I think VISA International is doing wierd things, taking money from savings instead of checking, then switching it, etc. We finally got train tickets from AMS Schipol airport to the central train station in Utrecht. What a wonderful ride!
The train was new and sleek with a pointed nose, smooth and clean and fast. It was 9:00 at night, and the light was golden and it played sunset symphony for an hour as we sped through the countryside.
I love The Netherlands! The old parts of the cities look like right out of the year 1600, with tall skinny buildings and canals everywhere.
The rest of the country is absolutely like living in Tomorrowland! Fast trains link the cities, busses run on their own dedicated roads, and there are huge modern buildings everywhere. The flat ground is landscaped with many uniform rows or trees, and the green flat ground is still laced with canals.
10. Arrival in Utrecht. Finally! The station is really an upscale shopping mall, with the trains coming in underneath. We try to follow the several sets of directions we have. we walk about a mile, and finally see the sign four our hotel in an unexpected spot. Try to check iin. Confusion. Guess what? There ar two NL hotels in Utrecht! We are supposed to be at the other one!
We finally give up and have the desk call us a taxi. Mercedes Benz, nice taxi. I thought it would cost more, but it was only €7.50. We finally arrived at the correct hotel, in the center of the old city, and right across the street from the oldest church in town.
So that was our ten travels for the day! May you always have shorter travel days, and may they be as varied and exciting as this one was!