Utrecht to Arnhem – Pancakes! Parks! Attempts?

Inside of Princenhoff, Pancake House and restaurant.

Inside of Princenhof, Pancake House and restaurant.

 

The second day of our cycle tour of the Netherlands, Rachel and I awoke early, but not early enough to see our host from Couchsurfing, scoot off to work. We were awoken by his furry friend, a forward feline named chip. We too scooted off, out of Utrecht, stopping at Princenhof for some Pannenkoekens and beer before heading out along the bikepath towards Arnhem. The trip had kicked Rachel’s ass yesterday. As previously mentioned, she had never cycled before and so the 60km, supposed piece of cake trek from Amsterdam to Utrecht, was more like a piece of metal shrapnel lodged into her legs, than delicious cake lodged in her mouth.

Princehof's famous chef

Princehof’s famous chef

The day’s ride took us through beautiful forest and countryside. Passed ba’ing sheep and woofing dogs and naying horses. Many people were out and about on their bikes, from very old to toddlers perched in makeshift baskets. Quite heartwarming to see a society promote the bicycle, as Netherlands tends to do. Needless to say, after another long day, Rachel’s legs were aching and so we decided to stop in Ede, a town I had been to before, on a previous bike trip through this region. Not much to this town, so we interneted it up at a Mcdonalds and found a good deal at a nice hotel, the Reehorst, to refuel for the next day, where we would cycle to Arnhem and on our way check on the Netherlands elusive desert.

For some reason, from this day, all I have is photos of Princenhof.

For some reason, from this day, all I have is photos of Princenhof.

Details of Princehof.

Details of Princehof.

More details of Princenhof.

More details of Princenhof.

Check out the accompanying video:

More info on this leg of the trip:

Pannenkoekenhuis Princenhof

Address: Hoofdstraat 1, 3971 KA Driebergen-Rijsenburg, Netherlands
Hotel Reehorst
Address: Bennekomseweg 24, 6717 Ede, Netherlands

Wikipedia:

Rhijnauwen is a castle, former heerlijkheid (fiefdom), and former municipality in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It was located northwest of the village of Bunnik.

The municipality of Rhijnauwen consisted of Nieuw- and Oud-Amelisweerd (red and orange), and the original heerlijkheid Rhijnauwen (yellow). Shown here on a map of the municipality Bunnik in 1868.[1]

The municipality existed from 1818 to 1857, when it was merged with Bunnik.[2] It consisted of the former heerlijkheden Amelisweerd and Rhijnauwen.[3] Around 1850, it had 50 inhabitants.

The name is still used to denote the small forest that separates Bunnik and Utrecht.
The name is probably derived from Rhijnauwen Auen, an old word for the wet meadows along the Rhine. The estate is probably from the 13th century. The first mention of the manor Rhijnauwen dates back to 1212. The House was in the first half of the 14th century it belonged to the genus of Lichtenberg. This family was one of the most powerful families of Utrecht and had also Lichtenberg House, which was located in a place now part of the town hall in Utrecht. Rhijnauwen was officially recognized in 1536 as a manor. After the marriage of John IV of Lichtenberg Aleid Renesse came from the farmhouse in the hands of the family Van Zeeland Renesse. In 1449, the brothers Frederick and John Renesse Rudolf after the victory of Deep Holt Zweder banned from Culemborg, and in 1450 the house was on fire Rhijnauwen commissioned by the city of Utrecht. After the house has exchanged owners several times. The last private owner of the house was the family Rhijnauwen Strick van Linschoten Rhijnauwen bought in 1773. In 1919 the estate was bought by the city of Utrecht. The then owner, the Dowager Strick van Linschoten should stay there until the end of her life. On April 1, 1933 was leased to the hostel Rhijnauwen Foundation, which gave the building its current destination.

 

 

 

Sid: The Handsome Bum returns to the stage at the Victoria Fringe Festival

Sid, at home.

Sid, at home.

Hey Everyone!

Sid, everyone’s favoritest and handsomest bum, is back on the stage at the Victoria Fringe Festival. Here is a little blurb on the show:

Meet Sid, another face on the Downtown Eastside.  We pass by her on our daily commutes without differentiating her from the dilapidated cityscape.  Listen to her tell tales of mirth, tales of the unnoticed, tales of perennial.

We listen to Sid, because she is in a show.

Would we listen to her otherwise?

Sid ran for a week in 2014 at Little Mountain Studio. Here are some of the reviews:

“Rannelli continues to impress with her range.”

“Sid: The Handsome Bum is a play filled with questions. It makes us question how we not only view those on the fringes of society but why there’s an uncomfortable feeling of listening to them, looking at them and helping them.”

“Sid: the Handsome Bum is a cleverly written play backed by a strong performer.”

Sid the Handsome Bum rips a veil of privilege from the audience. Those silenced in our community are empowered, given winged voices that must be heard.

An intimate look into the life of someone on the streets. You will laugh and cry. You will leave feeling you should do more, ignore less.

You lose the stage and fall victim to empathy. Whatever your stance or preconceptions, you feel what Sid feels and I implore everyone to experience the tragedy and comedy.

Sid forces us to confront something we’re all used to ignoring everyday, and that alone made it worth seeing.”

The show will be at St. Andrews Elementary (1002 Pandora Ave) in Victoria. The dates are as follows:
August 29th, 2pm
August 30th, 7:30pm
September 1st, 6pm
September 2nd, 9:30pm
September 3rd, 5:30pm
September 5th, 5pm
Tickets available soon. This is your second chance to see Sid: The Handsome Bum. Don’t miss it for the world!
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Why I Travel Blog

Church of St. Alexander, Warsaw

Church of St. Alexander, Warsaw

There are the obvious reasons why one travel blogs. To share travel adventures, through photos and words, trying to encapsulate an experience to the reading and viewing audience. To imbue in others the same excitement, curiosity and inspiration that the blogger felt whilst traveling. To pinpoint exact emotional exaltation.

Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw

Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw

This is also the general sentiment of why I travel blog as well. The intricacies of it are way more personal. Solo travel for me only started at 24, with a trip to Brno, Czech Republic with a theatre show that ended up, with a very unexpected job in Prague and then a 4-month expedition, tracing my family’s heritage through Eastern Europe. I had never a train before and was thrilled with sticking my head out of the window, letting the wind make my eyes squint, a tornado of my brown hair, like a dog in a car ride. That same trip, I was introduced to couchsurfing. Travel took on an entirely new meaning, where it wasn’t simply placards and buildings and other travelers, it was local people, personal accounts, trans-ocean humour, Ipod music exchanges, one or two dance sessions, a game of golf in Dijon, foraging for dinner in Groningen. All I had read about travel came from books and those books laid out the foundational blueprints of how to travel. Yet there had to be something else, something more expansive and less focused on the MUST SEES and the MUST EATS.

Warsaw Uprising Monument, Warsaw

Warsaw Uprising Monument, Warsaw

So blogs. First big websites like Trip Advisor (which I still use as a base for exploration), then more obscure travel sites like Atlas Obscura (which, if you haven’t checked out, is the best source for Off the Beaten Path travel oddities), to the worldwide blogosphere of adventurers, trippers, dream followers and spontaneity experts. I was hooked to their words, as many of them weren’t simply telling me what they saw, but how they felt, how places impacted them or didn’t. Blogging is personal creative writing, an individual’s take on the world through their eyes, through their pens, through their keyboards. It can be laced with superlatives, poetics, judgment, digressions, failure, no words at all, all visual. I blog, even if only a few read it, to show them my version of cities and towns, of nature and of bike trips. They are my visceral accounts of the world. They are my endorsement of decorative language, trying to squeeze out the true emotion I felt in a singular moment, possibly written days after. I cannot prescribe nor would I ever want to, a reaction to what I write or how it effects where people decide to go. I hope that the few who do read it, have an opinion or an idea that sprouts from it. I hope, as that’s all one can do with putting writing into the public’s glance, that it pushes people to either travel or challenge themselves, ask questions, look unto other blogs to continue planning or imagining a more complete global sphere.

All You Can Eat - Japanese, European and......everywhere else in all time and space? Babalu's in Warsaw. Felt so so so sick after this.

All You Can Eat – Japanese, European and……everywhere else in all time and space? Babalu’s in Warsaw. Felt so so so sick after this.

I frequently embellish memories. I cannot remember exacts, so I shameless fill in the blanks. I blog because I love to write. I love to reimagine what I have seen, to reinvigorate the recollections with verbose imaculations and neologisms (such as imaculations). Though, recent travel, via bicycle gives me the space to write as I travel. I stop where I want and if I feel the urge, I jot down the day, in summation or elongation. I write in a blue tent, where one of the poles is partially snapped due to a crow landing on it, by the waning sun, drifting behind the red mountains just outside of Santa Monica. That is an actual memory. The things that I lock into my brain vault are sometimes obscure fragments. Sometimes, due to my prior habits during travels (drinking copious amounts at night), memories are literally slits of narrow light with broken and blurred images. I write as form of self-preservation, because one of my greatest fears is loosing it all to time. Not necessarily as a legacy of what I have accomplished, but more as something for myself to look back on and simply account for what I have done. Not as somewhat of a CV for pomposity, but more as a timeline that I existed.

Warsaw Uprising Museum

Warsaw Uprising Museum

While my travels include people and places, I also consciously set quests for myself. I blog to uncover gems, maybe not ones that were necessarily covered by layers of sediment, just ones’ that maybe overlooked, underappreciated, the map to get to them has been used as scratch paper or made into papier-mâché for a birthday piñata (what I am saying is that no one cares where this place is). Blogs and websites are full of hints and my duty with these hints is to test them out and confirm their validity. This description seems quite vague without an example. The city of Xian, China, was the ancient capital for hundreds of years. Tourists flock here to cycle the ancient walls and see the UNESCO approved Terracotta Warriors. What very few people know about, is that at the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi, a ways out of city, another burial plot was opened to revealed, miniature terracotta figurines, along with terracotta livestock and chariots. In total, over 50,000 pieces are on display. Along with this amazing experience, is a very beautifully set up underground museum, with large vaulted glass walls revealing the digs, but beside and below you, you are free to trapes around the tomb area, see several of the tomb gates, and watch an AMAZING hologram film about the history of the site (no 3d glasses required). This place is completely under the radar and when I got there, I basically had free range of the place (think Night at the Museum, minus the reanimation of historical items). There were a handful of different directions as to how to get to this place, since it was in an odd location of the highway, leading north of the city. Armed with a few of these Internet found directions, plus the Chinese characters to this place, I ventured out to confirm this place’s existence. Luck had it that the #4, the first bus I got on and was on my list, was confirmed by the bus driver to be the correct bus. For me, that could happen is I end up going somewhere else and possibly exploring something unexpected. So it’s a win win for me.

Warsaw Couchsurfing Dance Party

Warsaw Couchsurfing Dance Party

I blog to interact with people. Blogs are a dialogue, a community of shared experiences and responses, where the responses may come in the form of words or in exploration of what the blogs’ describe. I hope that as this site builds that this dialogue fills the forums and itinerary of the new site (which will be up THIS MONTH) with evolving dialogues and information that result in people testing the waters, unburdening themselves with limits by asking questions and seeing the blog reflect your inquiries, with maybe not always answers, but further explorations, adding points to the map that I will travel to confirm experiences and places or discover errors, saving you the hassle of a fruitless expedition to nowhere. My blogs and my travels will mirror your dreams, aspirations, desires, or highlight your wonderful memories, follow your deep incites, possibly making travel a more tangible possibility instead of something you do on free weekends or something you’ll do when your decrepitly old.

Babushka, Kiev

Babushka, Kiev

I blog, because it makes me feel wonderful. It’s me facing my fears as well. I travel around the world, yet I am scared of publishing my writing. I believe it is good, that it is informative and well written, but am afraid of it being said to be otherwise. This is my version of being bold and it holds more importance that what many would be considered a blip, not part of any creative career. But blips are my greatest assets. Microcosms are my favorite worlds. I am worried about not getting anywhere; I am worried about denouncing things in favor of acceptance.

Orthodox Priest.

Orthodox Priest, Kiev.