Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

Well boys & girls: I'm back from vacation again. I hopped over the Atlantic Ocean once again to visit my girlfriend Carrie. Our last vacation was in San Francisco, last September, so it was time for another (short) trip. I left on Friday, May 9th and just got back this morning after a three hour delay (more about that later). This time we visited beautiful Savannah, Georgia, a good 5 hour ride from Tallahassee. Some people told me before I left that it's a mix between St. Augustine and New Orleans, and after visiting I would say I agree. It's a very historic town (by American standards) and the people are very friendly. I loved the historic Riverfront and all its little restaurants and shops; it reminded me a bit of Pier 17 in San Francisco (the touristy part of it).

We had great weather (not too hot, not too cold) and enjoyed some very good meals including one of my favorites at B&D Burgers. They got voted "Best Burgers in Town" 6 years in a row and I can personally say that they deserve that title! Man: it tasted gooood. Anyway: I was lucky to be with my girlfriend on my birthday for the first time in 11 years! Somehow we managed to never be together when either of us had their Bday. So that was cool too.

As usual the week flew by and before I knew it I was on my way back again. As seems to be the case lately I also ran into some delays this time: my flight back out of Atlanta to Amsterdam had a mechanical problem (something about a fuel gage). They weren't able to repair it so we switched planes altogether. I don't know how, but somehow they had a spare plane and we didn't even have to switch seats or anything.

Savannah 2008

Looking out my window this Easter weekend here in Holland just makes me want to do one thing: hop on a plane and flee to some nice and warm place! So that's exactly what I am going to do: I booked a ticket for warm, nice and beautiful Florida! I'm going to fly there in exactly 46 days and will stay for a week. Just long enough to enjoy a nice break from work. We haven't had much of a winter this year but for whatever reason it seemed like it started this weekend: Friday we had snow and hailstorms and it even is below 0 degrees Celsius here during the night! Brrrr! Because I'm going in May, I will be with Carrie on my birthday for the first time in 11 years! And I plan on making it a nice party! We haven't decided yet where we will go, but we have narrowed it down to two places. We will either be in "The Big easy" (New Orleans) or Savannah.

Also, if things go well, I'll be watching Carrie while she jumps out of a perfectly good plane without any reason - also known as parachute jumping. I promised her that as a birthday present. She thinks she'll be able to coax me into jumping as well. We'll see about that: I do not have a death wish like her.

An nice benefit of going to the US at the moment, is that the Dollar is still at a low against the Euro. Hotels that used to be about €100 a night are now around €60! Also renting a car will be very cheap! I think I might even take an extra suitcase with me so I can buy myself some cool clothes, gadgets etc.. Also I promised Carrie I'd help her out with some work around her house so we'll make sure we do something useful as well.

Yup, all in all I am exited to go!

No this blog is not about me being a fan of George G. W. Bush. Its about my visit to the Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, Holland, also know as "Burger's Bush". I went there today with my little nephew (6) who was staying over this weekend. As a good uncle I figured I had to entertain the little guy. After all; I live in an appartment and have no backyard or anything fancy, and playing Quake Wars or something like that doesn't seem too appropriate for a kid his age. I figured that every kid likes a zoo and since I never visited Burger's Zoo, I figured let's go there. It's about an hour's drive from my home.

And we weren't disappointed: it actually is a cool place as it has some cool theme parks within the zoo: Burger's Dierenpark (Burger's Zoo), Burger's Safari, Burger's Bush, Burger's Mangrove, Burger's Desert, Burger's Ocean. If you followed my blog you know I visited the Monterey Aquarium this September and that was pretty nice. But I have to say that Burger's Ocean wasn't to shabby either! Ok, their collection is not as diverse as that at Monterey but their huge (and I mean huge!) shark tank is quite an eye-catcher.

Anyway: just to give you an impression I shot some video's of the Bush and the Aquarium;

Burger Zoo (Bush)

It has been two weeks already since I came back from my vacation in California. I had to sort some things out first with my webserver before I figured it was save to post my stories here again. Besided that, I had a lot of stuff on my mind in regards to my work. But, finally I can start working on my blog again and what better way to start, then to tell about my beautiful vacation? On the left you already see one photo I took in San Francisco. If you read the full article (click on the continue reading link below) you will see the other nice photos I took on my trip. Something I should mention about that, is the fact that I have a new camera that I actually got 1 day before I left: a very nice Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3.

I was thinking about getting a replacement for my Olympus C 765 Ultrazoom for a while. I have had that camera for 3 years and I was pretty happy with it, but there are a few things about it that bothered me a lot. The lack of an image stabilizer (it is 10x optical zoom so ideally you would need one) was one. But the biggest problem is that is misses an autofocus light, leaving it utterly useless in dark circumstances. Well, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 makes up in all of those departments and it also adds wide-angle (28mm) and is half the width as my Olympus. So I was quite happy to take it with me!

But before I completely digress; let's talk about my trip. It took me some 1000 miles around California; visiting San Francisco driving through Napa and Napa Valley, Yosemite National Park and last but not least Monterey and Big Sur. It was a great visit! Continue reading "California dream" »

Now my luggage is back and I feel a bit less drowsy I took the time to upload the videos I took with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 digital camera. I will write more about my awesome visit to San Francisco and Calfornia in my next blog (West coast rules!), but here are the videos I shot.

California Vacation 2007

Unlike my luggage, I am back in town. I feel like I have a huge hangover! As usual jetlag has hit me bad. I flew back on Friday the 14th and it was a rough ride. To get on the plane that is; the flight itself was pretty enjoyable. No it was the mess before I got on the plane!

I was supposed to leave Tallahassee airport at 13:40 to get to Atlanta and leave there at 17:40 for Schiphol. I arrived at 11:50, said goodbye to Carrie and checked in at 12:00.

After I checked in and boarded the plane they announced that they had a weight problem. That's right: "a weight problem". Delta obviously did not do their calculations right and the plane exceeded the allowed weight for landing. So the pilot then gave the passengers the following option: if there where 3 volunteers that would get of the plane they would get 200 "Delta bucks" and upgraded to first class for their next flight. It was that or they would start to pick "volunteers" to stay behind. It took over 25 minutes before that worked out; very annoying! Continue reading "Left luggage" »

Right folks: exactly one week from now I will be in San Francisco, California with my girlfriend Carrie. So don't expect any other entries for a couple of weeks, as I will be gone a fourthnight. It's nine days of California, going from San Francisco to Napa Valley (and Sonoma), then we go visit the magnificient Yosemite national park, and then back for a fews days to Pacific Ocean at Monterey and maybe have a look at what is called the Big Sur on Highway 1. I'm looking very forward to the trip and hope to enjoy many new sights, sounds and impressions. As usual I will try to make some nice photos (which I will post to my photoalbum off course). Who knows: maybe we will even expercience a small earthquake ;-) Anyway: here are some YouTube videos from all the places we will visit! Blog you later!

Impressions of California