A trip to the Northeast

Ukkie is closed for the 4 day Easter weekend. We decided to take an overnight to Groningen in the Northeastern part of the country. After a 2 hour train ride (why we didn't want to do it in one day) we arrived in Groningen. The town itself was alright...it was badly bombed during World War II. However, mixed in to the 'reconstruction' is alot of 'modern architecure.' Hummmm, now, even though we have an infatuation with green modular housing (like Clever Homes), some of the attempts fell a bit flat. The main museum, Groninger Museum, is a work of modern art in itself.
Jake was not impressed with the idea of an afternoon looking at modern art (we had visions of Olivia, 'I can do that in about 5 minutes.') but we were very pleasantly surprised with an exhibit of the Norwegien painter, Askeli Gallen-Kallela.

His figure painting and still life sections we breezed through, but his landscapes were amazing. I'm also so impressed when someone can paint snow. It's just white - but colored from the reflected light. Anyway, we were cheated out of any postcards because the exhibit was ending and they just had reproductions of his work on hell left.

We walked around and then checked into to our hotel, which was really nice and had a lovely resturant attached (more on that below). We went on our first boat ride in the Netherlands. It was alright....the tacked on out and back through the industrial section to make it a full hour was, well interesting to Elena who liked the container ships with cranes attached! After the boat ride, we took a long walk through the city on the archicture tour while Elena slept.


Highlights included a very fancy rowing club


and a urinal (unfortunately closed for winter).