This trip sure is starting out better than the last one since both me and my luggage got here on time. And my goodness, being able to walk properly certainly improves travel! What fun it is to be able to walk circles around Rafaël! Just kidding. Actually, I felt a little pang when he was exclaiming over how well I could walk and it struck me that a medical marvel such as I experienced is not available for him.

After settling in at Rina's and making a preliminary gift distribution, I'm antsy to get out and buy some Dutch groceries, so we decide to combine this with a trip to Elandsgracht to check on the Cyberlounge, that wonderful place I talked about so much in Amsterdam by Segway where I simply plugged my PC into their LAN.

So Rafaël takes his bicycle and I walk with the PC in my pack. The ten blocks or so is pleasant although Rina's fears are fully realized when we arrive at the location of the Cyberlounge and see that the space is now a dry cleaners. So much for the Cyberlounge.

On the way home we stop at the big Albert Heijn, which has been remodeled for the better although I no longer know where anything is. Among other things I get a jar of Zaanse mosterd, which I've been looking forward to for eleven months, and some sausages and milk and juice and chocolate milk and bread and eggs and potatoes and OK, four brands of milk chocolate-hazelnut bars since I can't very well go eating the chocolates I've just brought across a continent and an ocean as gifts. And yes, I break down and grab a smoked mackerel even though I had earlier told Rafaël that this year I was going to hold out for de Volendammer's mackerel instead of the supermarket stuff. See, it winked at me as I passed the case.

Rafaël helped carry everything home, and after I had a little nap we celebrated my first evening in Amsterdam by going out to the New King for babi pangang and sweet-sour chicken. I think I had in the past eleven months wound myself up into such a frenzy over the babi pangang that when I failed to see God at the first bite there was a minor wave of disappointment. Still, it was awfully good and somehow the two of us managed to get through all of it. And what a bargain at €19, with rice and tea.

Afterwards, we strolled somewhat circuitously back here, me snapping pics of graffiti and doorways and such, stopping at that French Patisserie on the Dam for hot chocolates mainly as an excuse to dawdle. Back here I was suddenly so tired that I pretty much shut down on Rafaël and crawled in bed early.

Rina's given me a tip from her son Cyrus on an Internet place she thinks might provide services that will get me going, so I'll check that out tomorrow. And open a checking account in a Dutch bank with the fistful of fifty peso Mex's I brought in so as to get around the current weakness of the dollar. My, do those ever light up an airport scanner!

Here's some graffiti on Mosterdpotsteeg: