— षट् सहस्राणि अष्टौ —
Shobhit walked home from work with me again yesterday, though he didn't meet up with me until about 9th & Pike. I was about 10 minutes later than usual because I walked over to Target and bought a bottle of Shower Spray and also a $24 set of two pairs of earrings. I lost one of the hoop earrings I really like a few months ago and I was tired of having to only choose the smaller hoop pair. Well, now I have three sizes of hoop earrings, as this one's smaller pair was the same size as the older larger pair, and came with another pair even a bit larger. Anyway, I keep wondering if a guy I played with at Steamworks several months ago somehow managed to snatch it, because the earring was gone when I got home from the bathhouse, and that guy had complimented my earrings. I don't know how he'd have gotten it off my ear without my noticing, but then, I also don't know how it could have fallen off without my noticing. And there were moments that evening when I was, let's say, distracted.
Moving on!
The weather was about 10 degrees cooler yesterday than on Monday, but it was also far sunnier. I actually felt surprisingly nippy when I first went outside after work, but by the time Shobhit and I were approaching home I was actually getting pretty warm. I never did take my jacket off this time, though. I noticed as we approached our condo complex that there was not a cloud in the sky.
The forecast high today is 59° and sunny, but it was quite cold again this morning, at 38°. On colder winter days I'll wear my red hoodie under my pea coat; today I wore my red hoodie under my lighter UNFI jacket. This way it's easier to wear the jacket without the hoodie on the way home, and store the hoodie in my backpack.
Anyway, Shobhit had a Zoom meeting between 6:00 and 7:00. I made us naan pizzas for dinner, even though he had also made a rice dish. We later watched a low-budget college comedy on Huly called
Pizza Movie, and it was dumb as hell. But then there were lots of things in it that really made me laugh too. I really wanted to hate it but then it kept making me laugh.
— षट् सहस्राणि अष्टौ —
— षट् सहस्राणि अष्टौ —
While I waited for Shobhit to finish his meeting, I looked up Eurostar train tickets between Amsterdam and Brussels, because Shobhit had noted we should book those tickets. They operate a lot like plane tickets and prices go up the closer you get to the date you want. We paid $492 in the end (really, I did: Shobhit paid with his credit card for the cash back and then I Zelled him the amount), which makes me think we perhaps should have done this sooner. That worked out to $246 per person, or $123 per person each way.
We did learn some valuable lessons in this process. Shobhit was relatively careful not to put all the blame on me for this, as he was sitting there looking at all the same screens I was when we booked the tickets. But he didn't think to change the currency to Euros until after the tickets were booked. And the website did only a 1.23 conversion rate with US dollars when booking in American currency; had we booked it in Euros, his credit card would have converted at the real-time current conversion rate, which is actually 1.17. We would have saved a good chunk had we done it that way, and are making a note to do that with any other online bookings we might do in advance (the Anne Frank House, for instance).
Shobhit even wanted to see if we could cancel our order once it had already been done, but there was a €25 cancellation fee, so we let it go. Shobhit remained irritated by this for a while, but we have no choice but to accept it. We just need to be sure to convert the currency to Euro for any other bookings we do.
Anyway, I'm still glad we booked it, and that we booked the Eurostar. I did learn just this morning that there's another train option that is cheaper and only slightly longer, but I decided I wanted this chance to experience the Eurostar anyway; we won't be using it any other time. The Eurostar between Amsterdam's Central Station and Brussels's Midi Station takes only two hours, and has only four stops. It only occurred to me this morning that this will probably be the only chance we get to see a lot of the countryside in both The Netherlands and Belgium, from this train, and I'm looking forward to that in itself.
This does mean all of the most major travel booking is now done. Our flights were booked months ago (September, actually), and our trains between Amsterdam and Brussels are now booked—as are all three of our hotels, though we won't actually pay for those until we arrive. I've already entered them into the trip's budget though. We will also do day trips from Amsterdam to both The Hague and Rotterdam, and will take more local transit systems to do that. We can book those trains once we get there, which might be cheaper if we book locally.
I'm so excited about this trip! And this is beyond two other exciting things on the calendar that still need to happen first: my Birth Week, which will begin two weeks from Friday; and our anniversary trip to Whistler, which will be only two nights but I still expect to be really fun.
— षट् सहस्राणि अष्टौ —
[posted 12:30pm]
