While they had some defunct wifi access points in the hotel [I'm glad they wheren't operational], I had a very nice week off with my girlfriend in a hotel in the woods of the piece of nature called the Veluwe. I couldn't resist taking my pda [with the story it carried all books I wanted to read], and took the little folding keyboard with it. Here's my transcription of a week doing, well, lots of relaxing things :)

20040712 10:50

Yesterday we went up quite early; vacation was upon us :) At around twelve o'clock we departed and at 13:45 we arrived. Very nice hotel, even nicer surroundings! Lots of woods, which smell nicely because the rain doesn't have vacation like us... [We had one pouring shower on our way here]. We got the key, inspected our room [wow, nice bath!] and got our luggage. When installed, we got back into the car end rode around in the villages surrounding our location. Nice roads they have here, be it somewhat narrow.

20040712 12:50

Just went for a walk through the woods. We did the yellow route, which was 3.3km according to the map. It's a bit greyish, but the sun managed to surprise us once [I have a picture as evidence]; the rest of the stroll was a nicely damp piece - wet forrests smell so good when it has rained recently.

Breakfast is excellent too btw - this surely is a class hotel :)

But I didn't finish my story about yesterday. While cruising around we noted the various restaurants and other important places of the towns surrounding the hotel. We stopped to get some apple pancake and tiny puff-pancakes in some pancake restaurant. Very tasty! Then we cruised along end finally ended up at the hotel again. We relaxed a little [cruising is exhausting] and went out to a large Italian restaurant. Completely stuffed we went on a little stroll in the woods near the hotel and finally got back in our room again. Did I mention we've got a huge bath? ;)

20040713 10:27

Just finished breakfast, which wasn't in the Brasserie de Paris this time, but in some other nice room. Still drizzling outside... On the radio they have a message for travellers by train: on the route from the station I always use and Amsterdam a suspicious parcel has been found and everything has been delayed. So far for terrorism.

Yesterday after the walk we went for a swim in the swimming pool. We had it completely for our own; talking about having a nice vacation :) Read a while in the beach chairs [I'm reading SnowCrash by Neal Stephenson - very nice SciFi book with interesting theories about Bable and hackers] and then went cruising again. We did some shopping, bought some wine and embarked on a quest for a restaurant. We ended up in a chinese/cantonese one with great food. We enjoyed some wine in our room end slept quite well because of it ;)

20040713 20:02

Just had dinner in restaurant Het Wolvenbosch [Wolves wood]. Great food and delicious ice cream. Wow, I'm stuffed. Anyway, we went to castle Doorwerth, which is a "true" castle in my sense that it exists out of two parts, kind of a castle in a castle. It has a castle moat too :)

After wandering around in the not quite smallish castle, we went out for a walk through the woods. It should've been 3.9km, but we managed to lose the guiding poles some times, making more meters adding up to a walk of about 2.25 hours. It was quite steep on several occasions too, so we had some tired feet when we found our car again. However, it was very refreshing with some magnificent views on impressive woods and wide landscapes.

20040715 20:17

Just back from eating pizza and spaghetti, now headed for the swimming pool and the sauna. Got a little time to do some writing :)

Yesterday we went to Burgers Zoo, a nice zoo, divided into kind of logical parts of the world [desert, safari, bush etc]. We had very sunny weather, so we enjoyed the various animals and landscapes a lot. When we had seen it all it started to rain, but then we had already walked around for 4.5 hour or something. We relaxed at the hotelroom and didn't do anything noteworthy.

Today we went out with our bikes [finally some use for our bicycles!] and biked to a town nearby to do some shopping. We bought a map too, which I managed to loose on the way back... Shouldn't have put it in a pocket of my jacket I guess. We cruised somewhat and went back to the hotel to relax a little. Then we got out to eat some dinner and now my girlfriend is anxious to go to the sauna :)

20040717 10:29

We woke up in a fairly warm room; yay, the sun is shining for the first time when we open up the curtains! Of course we had sunny moments before, but waking up this way always changes my mood for the better. We just had breakfast and now we are readying ourselves to go home. To bad, because it's a lovely day today.

Yesterday we went for a long walk across the moor. A beautiful sight, be it that the sun wasn't quite with us. We still enjoyed all of it and made a lot of pictures. We relaxed at our room - reading our books - and enjoyed a hot bath. Then we went out to eat some pancakes. When we where stuffed, we returned to the hotel, read some more and watched "Edward Scissorhands", a modern day fairy tale. Nice movie.

So now we are preparing to go back home. It's finally sunny, so we will go on a little walk around the hotel before we depart, taking some last pictures [cards are full anyway :)].

20040718 22:26

I'm sitting here at my laptop, finishing this log. The ride home was one and a half hour of sunny racing at the maximum legal velocity. Always nice to drive quite fast and not having to worry about those heaps of flashing gray boxes that bother other people to death. The full 512MiB of vacation pictures have been shown twice already [they look very crisp at my high res laptop screen - nice!]. I have to rotate some of them and then I will put most of them online. Still not decided whether I will use Gallery for it, but that's only a detail.