Strange to other marathons, this one had a start time of 11:00 am. Most that I know of start early in the morning. I got pretty stressed out about where to meet him, planning to see him in as many spots as possible.

It seemed to work out find, the transportation pass I had purchased made it really easy to find my way through the city. A couple of the parts, I walked from point A to B, rather than public transportation. I ended up walking through some “interesting” neighborhoods.

I know that my cheering for all runners made a difference. Iwas clapping for everyone and giving chants of encouragement. I recieved many dutch thank yous and many smiles.

I met Alan at  more than 4 different points.  A couple to give goo and water. Unfortunately Alan got pulled off the course for not meeting the time requirement (around mile 18). I was unaware of this, so was looking for him for an hour and half near the 30k mark. They had opened up the rode by this time, so I was quite stressing out, thinking of all worse case scenarios. Finally I decided to walk back to hotel and I got a call from Alan. He said they had made him get off the course, even though he still wanted to run. This will just give us fuel to run next year (me too) and tackle this challenge. This marathon is apparently one of the top 10 in the world, with a strict time limite of 5.5 hours.

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We had a drink and cheese and mustard at the hotel bar. It hit the spot…then a long nap.

Dinner was at Look, one of our favorites in Rotterdam. Their garlic mayonaise is absolutely amazing. I had a great garlic scallop salad and the chocolate cake with garlic ice cream is to die for. Alan’s meal included garlic soup, chicken, salad, fries, potatoes, and garlic icecream with chocolate cake (he split half with me). I had hot chocolate with amaretto as a night cap. What a long and eventful day!

Wow!  The Manhatten hotel really knows how to put on a good spread. We had an awesome breakfast. Afterwards we went to pick up Alan’s registration packet. The shirt was really nice (american and dutch national colors are the same!). There were tons of vendors on hand trying to get us to try their sports gels and sell us their gear.

My goal for the day was to visit Lene (my best friend as a child) in Belgium. Boy are the Dutch train systems messed up. I could not pay by credit card, nor could I get change for my larger euro bills. I ended up missing my train and begging someone to change money for smaller bills so I could use the coin machine to then purchase tickets in 1 euro increments for the coin machine (36 euro ticket).  I bought the ticket for the later time, then walked back to the hotel, noticing a sign about delays over the weekend. Apparently, 2 hours extra each way that weekend due to rail repairs. Leaving at 1 and arriving at 3 to Belgium to leave back to Netherlands at 4 to be back by 6pm, was not worth it to me. I tried to go back and return the tickets, but since half and hour had past, I would have to mail them in. So frustrating!

Backup plan was to go to see Windmills, especially for my mom. I bought a ticket to visit  Kinderdjik for 13 euro. It was  cute boat ride and and nice experience. Partly too, I stayed out of Alan’s way so he could mentally prepare for the upcoming marathon. http://www.kinderdijk.com/

In order to carbo load, we went to an Italian eatery for dinner. I had a ceasar salad with shrimp, but the shrimp looked more like meal worms at Brosa restaurant. The stupid kids sitting next to me kept kicking me, so one kick back ended that problem

Got up early to run this morning.  Saw a different side of Amsterdam..beautiful in the dark.  When I got back to the hotel, Alan had left to grab breakfast. Chocolate croissants..yum yum!

We took a quick train ride to Rotterdam. Staying at the Manhatten hotel (only 5-star hotel in Rotterdam). Wow! what a beautiful building and immaculate service. Sucks that there was no free wi-fi though.

We picked up our rental car at the Hertz office across the street. Off to Belgium. Alan was driving though. We stopped in Antwerp, but could not find the main attraction we were looking for. Ended up driving through town and getting right back on the freeway.

Alan stopped to get a sandwich, which unfortunately ended up making him sick. The next gas station we stopped at, Alan parked next to the air pump. Some man needed air in his tires…knocking on my windows to get my attention. I told him I could not move the car, then his wife..got in and was telling me to call my boyfriend to get him out here now and lecturing me on not parking beside the air pump. I got back in the car after yelling bitch to her. I did not have the keys, and Alan was sick…stupid Belgiumers?

Took us a while to find the actual monastary.  It is at the Scourmont Abbey.  A monk was there when we arrived, we asked for some directions, and Alan said merci..the monk made a joke up mercy and merci. Nice guy!

FYI-Brussels and south of there, French is spoken. North of there, Dutch is spoken.

Chimay is my most favoritest beer..so very excited to be in Chimay! We stopped at the restaurant and had 4 beers and 4 cheeses for 10 euro. What a great deal. Wow! that beer is strong and definitely felt a buzz from it.

We overheard a couple speaking English..I swore the guy spoke with an accent. We made a 60 dollar bet on this (me thinking the guy was foreign..and Alan saying he was American). I went over the couple (both work for google) and asked him where he was from. He said US…I told him I swore I picked up an accent. Originally he was from UK, but now living in the US. We called it even on this bet!

I bought a Chimay cheese knife  as my souvenier for the trip.

Got back to Rotterdam really late. Alan drove and I passed out in the car. I grabbed a sandwich from the gas station..then worked out for a bit. Ended up eating my sandwhich in the bathroom of the hotel

Today I left Seattle on route to my first official vacation of the year. Destination Amsterdam, but a slight layover in France. It was my first time flying air France. There were some pluses and some negatives to the experience. Pluses were the good service, decent food, and great movie selection. The minus was that the seats reclining in front of us, reclined fully, not just the back part. Some fat asian dude was in front of Alan..so he was very uncomfortable. His companion leaned back…I was in a bit of a fowl mood, so kneed several times..she moved her seat quickly back to an upright position (I felt the slightest amount of guilt).

A great movie selection was offered..including Avatar and “Do not disturb” (A new bollywood comedy). Avatar was interesting…conceptwise, but the whole sci-fi thing does not work for me. A good movie, but not my vote for the Oscars (thankfully Hurt Locker won). I did not realize bollywood movies include so much English. Also autotuning Bollywood  is interesting

Quick plane ride to Amsterdam, then we took the commuter train to Amsterdam Center. Luckily our hotel, was right across the street from the train station..Park Victoria Hotel. This hotel has some history to it. Classic, but old looking on the inside, plus the gym cost 14 euro per hour to use (heck no..I would rather run).

We settled our stuff in, then set out for our journey for lunch and the Heinekin Experience. Alan ended up with fries and mayo, I got a simple cheese sandwhich from Oh Go grocer. Finding the Heinekin experience was not so easy, but we managed.

The entire experience was fun and pretty interactive. We got to be “the bottle” with beer ride (interactive experience on becoming a beer). Also got to grind hops (Alan was quite good and this), and twist and turn wheels on the big copper brew kettles. We got to taste wort (a sweet mixture of malt and hot water) which is very sweet in tast. Apparently the dutch prefer two fingers of foam, whereas the Germans go for 1 finger of foam. A clean glass is necessary in tasted, and each sip, will leave a ring of foam to indicate how much was drank at each time. If this does not happen, the glass is not clean! We got a cool bracelet, with two buttons. Each button was for a beer. Alan did not drink any, but I had half of one, later asking for the button back..so my bracelet looked cool again. They were nice about it…stupid American tourists!

I took a nice 1 hour run west of town..hopefully not running through the Heroin district. It was a nice run and a different way to experience the city..so many canals!

Had dinner at Kohl-Noor..same place we ate last time we were here. I got to say, since Alan has been cooking indian food, eating indian food at restaurants pales in comparison.

Early to bed because early run in the morning, then off to Rotterdam and Belgium

Our reservation was for 9:30, but we were not seated til 9:40.  Because of the “slight” delay, we were comped a bottle of champagne and given and extra “cheeseball” appetizer.

Notable differences between Per Se and French Laundry were the seating. Very comfortable at Per Se (a  huge round intimate booth). Also the servers were really friendly and unintimidating. I would say the French Laundry service was excellent, but a bit stiff and informal. I feel like I could be friends with the servers at Per Se…they definitely left an impression.

The food was spot on. I am a pescatarian (vegan on most days) and they definitely hooked me up with the scallops (my favorite).

Restaurant information is available

http://www.elbulli.com/

Information about the impeding closure

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/dining/27adria.html

I guess I will be brushing up on Spanish!

Being that it was past 9pm, options were a bit limited plus looking for happy hour deals, so it was settled on duke’s Chowder house. The bamboo styling was admirable, but the atmosphere had the “mall restaurant” feel to it. I started off with a strawberry lemon-drop in a tall sugar-rimmed glass. Very Drinkable and quite refreshing.

The sourdough bread was a nice start and it helped crave our hunger pains. Duke’s signature chowder was next. It was nice and creamy, but heavier on the potatoes and lacking on the clams. Alan’s seafood chowder is far more delicious!

We ordered 3 apps to split: coconut prawns, calamari strips, and dungeness crab dip. The coconut prawns tasted as if they may have been previously frozen, and not as crunch as I would prefer. The sauce taste like it had a bit of plum in it..which was a bit distracting. The calamari strips were tasty, but served with an inappropriate sauce, served on a bed of fried cheese (hard to tell what it was). It was a tartarish sauce that was overpowered by vinegar. The Dungeness crab dip was served on a hollowed out piece of bread (a pedestrian presentation). It tasted ok, but  have had much better. I should not complain too much since they were $5 an order. Drinks as well were $5 (the best value of the night).

I have to admit the buttered (really margarine), brown-sugared, cinnamon-ed pizza dough balls that Alan had made hours before dinner were the highlight of the day. That is one meal/snack/dessert I will gladly revisit.

http://www.theworlds50best.com/module/acms_winners?group_id=1.html

This is quite an expensive hobby, since the meals are usually very expensive, as well as out of town or out of the country. Over the Holidays, I managed a trip to visit family and friends in Sweden and Finland. Luckily #21 on list was in Hesinki…so we made a trip out there

http://www.chezdominique.fi/home_cd2?

This restaurant has improved is rating by 18 places over the past year (Quite impressive).  It was my partner in crime, my cousin, and I who visited this fine dining establishment. My cousin is a recently trained chef, so her experience was a different one, and she luckily had a window seat into the kitchen. Dinner reservations were for 8pm

The first thing we ordered was a $24 per dollar glass of champagne. Quite possibly the best champagne I have had yet to date. My meal consisted of the 6 course surprise menu, with the 6 wine pairings. The others had the 9 course with 9 wines. They could not accommodate a 9 course pescatarian meal unfortunately.  Unfortunately I did not document the meal with pictures (we believed it would have been a bit inappropriate).

The first thing they brought out was a parmesan icecream cone…awesomely delishous. The next was a beet root soup (mine was minus the duck icecream). Crayfish salad, then lobster, then scallop and various other yummy things, then a mushroom soup,  then a halibut dish, 3 desserts followed (by this time the wine was talking and I don’t remember everything so clearly). Sadly I cannot give this place the justice it deserves by describing all the delicious details. Needless to say I could  not finish my last two glasses of wine. I think though, I ended up  a winner with about 8 courses total (Yeah me!)..and we managed to close the place down leaving around 12:30am or 1am. The conversation at our table was quite lively and it was clear we were enjoying ourselves.

Service was immaculate. Not a crumb on the table. One of the waiters was a Brit that may or may not have spoken perfect Finnish. Overall a Great Experience and highly recommended!

I will be frequenting restaurant #6 for Valentines Day! I feel like I won the lotto on that one…but am still waiting to see if I really lucked out with el Bulli reservations.

The big take from this documentary was the Neuticles (testicular implants for neutered male dogs)  http://www.neuticles.com/. I am having a  hard time believing this is a real product, and if so, that people would actually pay for something like this. My pup is a female, but my mother has a male dog (whom is neutered).  Although he is not a very masculine dog…I do not believe that the addition of Neuticles would in anyway make him dominate over the three female dogs in her household….but I could be wrong. I am interested to hear of anyone’s positive or negative experience with the product. For now it is just a good laugh of disbelief.

My feelings range from anger to guilt. I am angry at the dumbasses that had to ruin my morning, also angry that many times they get away with screwing innocent people (whose only fault may have been a too simple password). Guilt for knowing that I should have changed passwords long ago, as well as, canceled all accounts linked to a previous (no longer used) email address. My guilt does not make me feel that I am deserving of this by any means..just rehashing the warnings I have heard over and over about this potentially happening, sinking in. Coincidentally this blog http://www.aballs.com/?p=61 was written several months ago, but posted by my counterpart 3 hours before this all came to fruition. Yes…they deny any part to do with my problems..and I believe them to be honest in this matter.

I am thankful for Paypal for sending me the alert email and that they have algorithms to detect such suspicious activity (in this case i believe it was simply that I never use paypal and suddenly there was 15 charges). I checked both my bank account and the online credit card linked to the account and did not see anything missing..so cross my fingers nothing will actually happen. I did have to talk to a Paypal rep on the phone, whom deemed all the transactions unauthorized, which were then accepted as under investigation. They said the issue will be resolved in the next 7-10 days, but honestly..I think I will cancel the Paypal account.

My US bank flex perks VISA  account was linked to Paypal. Upon looking for any odd charges..I noticed not only a late fee, but also a finance charge. Huh? Knowing that I would be out of the country for the last payment, I payed off the balance 3 days prior to the billing date..and let things be. The reason I called was to address the Paypal account, but I first wanted to question the late fee and the finance charge. They could not help me with either issue…because  the previous month something similar had happened with the billing (not recieving the email for payment due). The Paypal issue…they could not, or would not put a stop to any transactions that were through paypal (my credit union was very helpful to make sure my bank account was protected).  I pay my account off in entirety every month and use it only as a means to collect flyer mile points. The flex perks program through US Bank uses Travelocity..and actually is a pretty good deal. I said my peace and bitched them out (Go Caroline…you suck!)..but am wondering if I can find a flyer mile program that can meet my needs (Delta AmEX is not doing it for me). I will be canceling this card come Monday.