It's Bullet Sunday from my last day in the Netherlands! And what a beautiful one it is... with blue skies everywhere you look. A nice change from the past three days. The weather came just in time, because tomorrow I'm back to Schiphol for my flight home.

• Beach. The Lady Penelope didn't have to fly out until late afternoon, so The DutchBitch was kind enough to take us to Noordwijk aan Zee so we could see the beach (and eat more potatoes with mayo). It was a nice day out, though the wind was blowing pretty fierce. This was great for the chute-surfers out on the water...

• Blue. After saying goodbye to Lady P. at the airport, we headed back into Amsterdam because I had forgotten my sunglasses at dinner last night. Thats when I saw something pretty amazing... blue sky behind the Hard Rock Cafe! In the half-dozen photos I have from previous visits, none of them have blue sky. But there it was...

• Big. In the USA, the restaurant portions are always massive, which means I can't ever eat it all and food goes to waste. Outside the USA, restaurant portions are usually of a more reasonable size, which is nice because I can actually finish everything on my plate without bursting. But when it comes to drinks, it's just the opposite. Order a Coke and they bring you a tiny bottle that costs at least double the price you'd pay in the States. Tonight Dutchy and I decided on Italian for dinner, and I was thrilled to see that they had both "regular" (i.e. tiny) glasses... AND "big" (i.e. "American regular") glasses on the menu. The down-side? I had to pay $7.88 (5,40€) for the privilege of ordering one...

• Parade. Just because I can't get enough of the painted elephants public arts project in Amsterdam...

• Funny. Last night, Dutchy treated us to some comedy DVDs featuring Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain. The guy is hysterically funny, and positively brilliant in his ability to interact with the audience. I had heard of the guy before because he hosts Mock of the Week from British television, but his stand-up was something entirely new to me. I pulled up Amazon so I could order his DVDs for myself... only to find out they aren't available for sale in Region 1. Nor could I buy them on iTunes. This is a load of bollocks. In the age of digital distribution, it's absolutely stupid that I can't buy a copy anywhere in the world. With DVDs I get it... they cost money to make. But a digital file on iTunes? It doesn't cost anything but a short time to convert the video (which has probably already been done for the UK store!). Like music, the concept of global digital distribution is completely lost on the video distributors. Oh well... until I can actually purchase a copy in my country, I guess there's always BitTorrent. How incredibly stupid that, for all our modern technology, idiotic stuff like this continues to happen.

YouTube has some funny bits and pieces from Dara's stand-up, and a good one is here.

And that's all she wrote for a fantastic visit to DutchyLand.

The day started off with an interesting twist... the hot water heater in Dutchy's house went kaput. The ladies managed to track down a hot shower for themselves (use your imagination here, heaven only knows I did), while I volunteered to stay behind and take a cold shower. So as to spend as little time as possible being chilled, I devised a plan whereas I would hose myself down, suds myself up, then rinse myself off.

It was a good plan. At first. Hosing myself down wasn't too bad, as it only involved a few seconds of contact with the icy water. Sudsing myself up was equally trivial. Where things went terribly wrong was in the last step.

Because it takes considerably longer to rinse soap off than to put it on.

And the entire time I was standing under that freezing stream of water... I could Not. Stop. Laughing.

Which probably made a terrific impression on Dutchy's neighbors, hearing a guy laughing hysterically while in the shower (let's hear her try to explain THAT one away!).

What finally made the laughter stop was when I looked down and saw the my once-magnificient pooferflargen had shrunk to the size of a peanut. There's just nothing funny about that.

Fortunately, Dutchy's cat was nonjudgmental on my plight...

But the morning's adventure in shrinkage was all made worthwhile when Dutchy made my wildest fantasty come true... her and Penelope took me to a snack bar so I could get some frites met mayo...

But the awesomeness did not stop with the fries and mayo.

It was taken to the Next. Level.

Because I was able to also have a cheese sandwich as well. A cheese sandwich made with "Old Cheese." Beautiful, sexy, tasty, aged Dutch cheese. On a roll. That looked like this...

While I looked like this...

Then, after a lunch so delicious I achieved orgasm, we went wandering in the local shops so I could make fun of the native products. I think this one speaks for itself...

Unless you're familiar with the French language, in which case it seems perfectly sane.

But if you are not familiar with the French language, you may be wondering how much more hilarious a product name could get than "Douche Creme."

I'm glad you asked...

I can't quite decide which one I like best. There is a case to be made for both Douche Oil and Douche Scrub. But there was no time to debate the merits of these douchey products because Bitchsterdam was at hand, and we had to head up to Amsterdam. Where we ran across a new batch of elephants! Including this beauty...

... on the way to the Hard Rock Cafe...

Where an amazing group of people consisting of Mr. Geeky Tai-Tai, Geeky Tai-Tai, Bra-Dutch, The Dutch Bitch, ME!, and The Lady Penelope got together for a wonderful night of food, drinks, and a lot of laughs...

Despite all that, there was still time for my Jägermeister habit to corrupt the innocence of Penelope's seasoned wine-loving palette...

All-in-all in was a wonderful evening at the Hard Rock Cafe...

Because I was the luckiest bastard on the planet this night, as I got to go back home with THIS...

All my thanks to The Dutch Bitch, for hosting such a fantastic event!

As the grand Bitchsterdam festivities are not until tomorrow, those of us in DutchyLand early had decided to goof off in the picturesque city of Delft in South Holland. It's a rather important city in the history of the Netherlands, and is famous for it's Chinese-style pottery and being the birthplace of the painter Vermeer.

After arriving in the city, The DutchBitch, Geeky Tai-Tai, her husband, and myself decided to take a speed-boat cruise on the Delft canals. Except the speed-boat never went over two miles an hour, which made for a relaxing start to our day...

The canals are smaller than those you'll find in Amsterdam, which makes them that much prettier...

The Central Square still has many old buildings, though apparently they're not quite as old as you'd expect because the city was razed by fire and then later destroyed again when a gunpowder factory exploded...

Geeky Tai-Tai and The Dutch Bitch outside of the Delf Cathedral...

Delftware hand-painted pottery is a big tourist attraction and incredibly expensive if you buy the "real" stuff. Fortunately, there's tons of imitation pottery around for the tourist trade...

Given that this is the Netherlands, one of my most favorite foods on earth is easily available... potatoes and mayo...

But the food for which Delf is made famous is Poffertjes, which are little pancake-type thingies that are served up with powdered sugar & butter and are totally delicious. Much to the annoyance of Dutchy, I kept mis-pronouncing them as "Pooferglarg" or "Poofterjarb" or "Pooferflargen"... which, if you follow any of us on Twitter, was responsible for terrorizing the Twitterverse last night...

Amazingly, there was a restaurant we found which proudly proclaims that "Bill Clinton Ate Poffertjes Here"... and has somehow survived the experience...

All in all, it was a perfect way to spend the afternoon...

After dropping off Geeky Tai-Tai back at Schophol so she could spend some quallity pooferflargen time with her husband (without annoying bloggers around), we goofed off for a while until the celebrated arrival of The Lady Penelope. From then on, it was Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, chips & dip, Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, Twittering, Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, laughing, Wine-O-Clock, and pooferflargen for the rest of the evening and into the early morning...

For everybody on Twitter who had to suffer through the experience with us, I apologize.

But not really.

Because we had an awesome time, and it's hard to make apologies for that.

Coming over to Europe, I smoosh two days into one. Going back home, I make one day into two. It's a not-so-pleasant consequence of international travel... but I'm kind of used to it by now so it doesn't bother me that much.

Here was my "day" Wednesday and Thursday, which I am now calling "Wedthurday"...

I got up early to drive to Seattle...

Was surprised to see there's already snow starting in the mountains...

Hopped on a plane to Amsterdam...

Was served warmed nuts while I watched movies (The Proposal and Terminator Salvation)...

Got a butter flower with personal salt and pepper shakers with dinner...

Watched my progress as I approached DutchyLand...

Got a "bagel" before landing...

Landed at Schiphol Airport in the early morning...

After The DutchBitch was kind enough to pick me up from the airport, she went to work... and I took the train into Amsterdam to have lunch with some friends! I arrived a couple hours early, so I wandered to the wonderful Van Gogh Museum.

I love the Van Gogh Museum. The world never seems so big than when looking at it through Vincent's eyes. On top of that, the museum itself is really nice with some great architecture to it...

After a great lunch with some good people, I decided to stroll through Amsterdam for a while before heading back to DutchyLand...

Just like many large cities, Amsterdam has some public art projects. My favorite is still the Bears of Berlin, but they've got elephants going on that are quite cool too...

Then it was the train back for dinner with Dutchy and some blogger talk.

Not bad for a 36-hour day!

And I'm off for a wild weekend in DutchyLand with the Bitch that is Dutch...

Also in attendence will be the Lady that is Penelope and the Tai-Tai that is Geeky.

With a roster like this, only time will tell if I manage to survive the event.

Here's hoping that if (by some miracle) I do survive, I'll not be permanently damaged...