have you hugged a windmill today?

i am finally out from the art history rock i've been living under this week. had a presentation wednesday and turned in my last paper yesterday. the class is officially over. woohoo!

last thursday, e. and i had a day of fun in leiden. there's a windmill in the town that's been turned into a museum, so we decided to check it out.




i guess it used to be a house?



there were about seven flights of scary ladder-type stairs:



the inside:


then we went out onto the balcony. it was really high up and a really windy day. not a comforting combination.




the view of the city was pretty cool, though.


supposedly there are 70 windmills in the leiden area, but i've only seen two. after the windmill, we headed to a boat rental place to rent a paddleboat.



we were paddling on the canals for more than two hours. we nearly went around the whole town.


(e. was on navigation duty while i was steering.)





a family of swans that got mad at us when we stopped to take pictures of them:



the next day, we met up with our art history class in the hague for our last class trip--the gemeentemuseum.




(lots of mondriaan and art nouveau.)

then we walked around the hague looking at examples of art nouveau in the town:







i finally got my train ticket to paris! i tried to buy it online, but the site was all in dutch (it even outsmarted google translator) so i ended up having to take a train to amsterdam, where i had to take a number, post office-style, and wait in line for two hours. all worth it to get to hang with my best friend for a weekend.

deuces,
b.