Today we visited the new Corpus Museum in Oegstgeest, which opened on 14 March 2008. The museum is housed in an impressive 7-storey building with a statue of a large man sitting on it. Corpus features a 1-hour multimedia tour through a giant body, traveling from the stomach, through the intestines, into the heart, lungs, mouth, eyes and eventually the brain.
The last three days we have seen the Rose-ringed Parakeet in our backyard here in Leiden every day and today it seems to be hanging around the whole time. Our neighbors have also taken note of it. Here are some better photos than the ones I posted on Wednesday.
Last week we saw a new bird in our backyard: a Goldfinch (‘Putter’ or ‘Distelvink’ in Dutch). It isn’t a rare bird at all, but we never saw one before in our own backyard.
Today we had a rare tour of De Meelfabriek (‘The Flour Factory’) in Leiden as part of Open Monumentendag (‘Open Monuments Day’). De Meelfabriek is an old factory near the center of Leiden, not far from our house. You can see it here from a short distance:
There was a total lunar eclipse tonight. From 10:30pm the shadow of the earth slowly moved over the Moon and from 11:44pm to 12:58am the eclipse was complete and the moon was a beautiful bright red from the Sun’s rays going through the Earth’s atmosphere. Actually, at 11:43pm, just one minute before the total eclipse, a huge cloud came in front of the moon here in Leiden and it started raining and hailing. It didn’t move until just ten minutes before the end of the eclipse, so we were really lucky to see it at all. I had a chance to try out my new Canon 400D. I know these photos are not really great, but it’s the first time I took pictures of the moon, so I’m pretty happy with it. More »