Did you know that the Pilgrims lived in Leiden, the Netherlands, for 11 years before boarding the Mayflower in 1620? They lived around the Pieterskerk, where today the annual Thanksgiving Day Service is held at 11:00am. More »

Leiden is a great place to live for a lot of reasons. It is picturesque, with cute small streets and old shop fronts, a moat-like canal around the center and several waterways passing through the middle, plus city gates, a castle fortification, and windmills. More »

While NASA engineers are still struggling with the cracks in the shuttle fuel tank, the agency announced their new spaceship and a plan to return to the moon by the end of the next decade. Meanwhile, more and more countries and private firms are developing their own space exploration plans. More »

Last weekend we flew with easyJet to London Luton, then took the easyBus to central London and then we stayed at the easyHotel. At GBP 2 per person for the bus and GBP 35.60 for the room per night this was our cheapest trip to London thus far. Everything was very basic, but pretty great. Except for a few things … More »

When I was in 8th grade, I had to give a speech. For my topic, I chose extinction, and I focused on the fate of the recently exterminated Dusky Seaside Sparrow. The small Florida habitat of the Dusky was destroyed when their habitat was flooded in an attempt to control the mosquito population at the Kennedy Space Center. The artificial lakes, which flooded out the Dusky nests, were later drained when a highway was built to connect the Space Center with Disney World. The last Dusky died in captivity in 1987. It lived out its last days on Discovery Island – in Disney World. More »

Since recently we get the American Fox News on our Casema digital television receiver here in the Netherlands, and I have noticed that they don’t seem to understand how the news ticker along the bottom of their screen should work. They put their Fox News logo at the end of every sentence, even if the same story continues in the next sentence. More »

Fox has made a huge mistake. This week the extremely hilarious sitcom Arrested Development was sadly cancelled again, and FOX has reduced the episodes for this third and final season to 13. Sign the online petition at petitionspot.com to save Arrested Development! More »

Last week we received United Airlines’ newsletter with the wonderful news that they have added extra flights from Europe to Chicago, namely from Zurich and Munich. What they don’t tell you in this happy press release is that they scrapped Amsterdam from the list. We bought two tickets earlier this year for December, and now our flight’s been cancelled and we have a stop in Washington DC. More »

Last weekend we had our annual family weekend at De Huttenheugte Center Parcs in the province of Drenthe. Here is a photo of the whole group I took on Sunday. More »

Every time I fly out of one of the London airports (Luton, Gatwick or Heathrow) I am flabbergasted by the disorganization of it all. It’s like every person working there is on their first day and doesn’t know what they’re doing. Even the passengers are standing around in confusion, gaping at the blurry old monitors waiting for their gate to be announced. More »