Not everyone is a Van Gogh fan, but I generally always have been because I was fascinated by the way his art form changed so drastically as did his sanity. One thing I learned was how to say his name properly rather than the American-ized “van-go”… instead it is van-gough, in a very Dutch cough-ish way.

I was very lucky in visiting the museum during this visit, because the visiting collection included much of the rest of his work including Starry Night. I was most fascinated by the fact that Van Gogh created mockups of most of his work, in the form of drawings and letters and journal entries. Why is this fascinating? Well, because it’s what web developers do today. Michaelangelo obviously did this with various sculpture drafts in working his way up to David, but it has never really occurred to me that painters did this as well with diagrams and drawings of what they were planning.

As is this case with most great museums, photography was not allowed so there’s not much for me to show.

For dinner, Peter, Nikolai and I had dinner with a local developer. The first place we met was not open, so we meandered around a bit until we found a surprisingly excellent Thai restaurant. We walked around for a while and found an interesting Belgian bar with eclectic American music, and then called it a night.

During the morning, I caught up on work and did a very small amount of shopping and exploring. I retrieved my badge for SpringOne and attended a session of two before heading over to Nikolai’s place to meet up with Peter Higgins. I don’t speak until April 29th, so I was more focused on tonight’s Dojo Beer event.

We met up at De Balie and had a drink or two before walking a while and eventually settling on a decent restaurant for dinner. After dinner we walked around to a few other pubs before calling it a night.

Overall, today was a fun day in Amsterdam filled with discussions about Dojo and JavaScript.

As it just a few days before Queens Day, the city was quickly gearing up for festivities, with a fair setup in the park right outside my hotel.

We went to Nikolai and Vicki’s new place for a great dinner. Their building is brand new, so the elevator had a fair amount of tagging on temporary boards protecting the elevator from people moving in. We added our own Dojo tag:

After a great dinner, I found my way back to the hotel via the tram system. I am staying at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, the conference hotel for the SpringOne conference where I am speaking about Dojo. The people in Amsterdam seem a bit more reserved and shy than in Australia and New Zealand, which surprised me a bit given that this is Amsterdam after all.

I arrived at the Sydney airport and found my way to Singapore Air, which had just confirmed my flight a day before. Unlike all of my other tickets, they had placed me on a stand-by list which they did not clear until the last minute. The A380 is a very popular aircraft, and my efforts to get upgraded to suite class, which had empty seats, were met with laughter.

The Sydney airport was nice, and the lounge had a reasonably good selection of food. When it was time to board, I made my way to the boarding area which had four lanes to handle each class on each deck:

Once on-board this monstrously large plane though, it felt very cozy and intimate. Because the seats are 34″ wide (so wide that two people could sit together in them), everything just felt spacious and comfortable. The mood and comfort of the seats and planes was just all around awesome.

The food and service was excellent, and the bathroom was larger than many hotel bathrooms. The flight attendants were serving a good selection of cocktails which would help me sleep more easily on my next flight. After 8.5 glorious hours, we arrived in Singapore.

The Singapore airport is very cool, including a gym, movie theatre, and more. I didn’t have enough time to enjoy these perks. Because of Singapore’s positioning as a hub for the world, they seemed to have flights at any time of day or night. The airport was the most Americanized of all of the Asian airports I visited, with English being the dominant language. The Singapore Air business class lounge was outstanding, but was also very crowded even late at night. After about 90 minutes, it was time to go to the gate to board. As was becoming more common in various international airports, I had to go through security again before boarding at the gate.

I then had the best night of sleep so far on the trip, sleeping for the first 7 hours of my 13.5 hour flight to London. This really helped adjust my sleep schedule to European time. I really enjoyed my time in the east, and moving on to Europe was a bit of an initial disappointment.

I arrived in London surprisingly refreshed, and then walked through a maze of corridors, took a bus, and then walked through another maze and a security and customs line. All of this, and I wasn’t even staying in London for this part of the trip!

The Star Alliance lounge offered much needed shower facilities which were high in quality, and a decent selection of breakfast foods. The wifi was a bit spotty, but overall it was a great place to spend a few hours while waiting for a flight from London to Amsterdam.

The older parts of Heathrow airport are under heavy repair. BMI switched us to a very small plane so there was no business class for the very short flight which was fine.

The flight itself was an uneventful 55 minutes of waiting and 35 minutes of flying. I arrived in Amsterdam ready to see the city and I was met at the airport by my friend Nikolai Onken.

Greg and a friend share a nice sailboat, and after a few months of repairs, they were ready to transport it to a moor closer to Greg’s place in Manly. We spent several hours touring the harbour and eventually did some light sailing when the winds pick up. I’ve never really sailed, but with only the three of us on board, I was put to use. Tourists were taking our picture from their tour boats which was pretty amusing. Sailing around Sydney provides some excellent views of the Opera House, and sunset at the moor created some really great images as well:

Greg, Jan, and I then had dinner at the (arguably) best pizza place in Sydney at the trendy Manly ferry building. We had a great conversation, and then it was time for me to catch the last ferry across to Circular Quay near my hotel in Sydney.

After lunch, I walked around Darling Harbour which contains a sea museum as well as an aquarium, and a bunch of shopping, before walking back to my hotel.

For dinner, we had a Dojo Beer event at 3 Weeds, which offered a great combination of tapas and drinks, including some good ciders.

No, I mean the arcades of Sydney including the Strand and the Queen Victoria Building:

The stores here were not particularly large due to the narrowness of the buildings, so they carried a much smaller range of inventory. For example, clothing retailers that might also carry things like boxer shorts in the USA would not do so in the arcade shops.

It’s often difficult to find non-touristy souvenirs. Oddly enough, there were two stores side-by-side that offered a shockingly useful selection of souvenirs for Ireland and Italy, much easier and of the same quality as you would find in Ireland. So yes, if you need to purchase souvenirs for Ireland or Italy, just make a quick side trip to Sydney!

I also took some time to reflect, eating at one of the cafes, doing some writing, watching the tourists walk by.

Finally, I had dinner with a few of the guys from Adobe that I met at Web’09 in Auckland the week before. We had a great conversation, starting with drinks near the Opera House, and then dinner on Darling Harbour at reasonably good steakhouse. I avoided the kangaroo, which I am told tastes like a fishy steak.

After 76 of the best days of my life seeing the world, I’m back in the USA, waiting for my flight from Charlotte to Phoenix.

I’ve seen and experienced so many amazing parts of the world, and yet I’ve seen and done so little. Sadly, I’m a bit disappointed that my trip is already over. It went by so very fast.

If you have the time and you don’t have kids, I have to recommend you take a round the world trip. I can’t wait to get out there again and see, experience, and learn more. For now, I’ll have to settle for a short business trip to San Antonio tomorrow.

The drive down to Sydney was great, as the fog and rain was limited to the Katoomba area.

I arrived at the Marriott Circular Quay, which is by far the nicest Marriott I’ve ever visited.

The room on the 31st floor offered a stunning view of the Sydney Opera House:

My itinerary said I should take a tour of the Sydney Opera House, so I walked downstairs and found my way to the opera house. Tours were readily available, and I enjoyed the cafe while waiting for the tour. The building has a fascinating history of a design that was picked by an artist that broke all of the rules. The architect that was brought in to help judge the designs was involved with the Arch in St. Louis, which did not surprise me as it was my first mental association when I saw the architecture.

I also randomly met Tara, a musician from Perth who was in the same tour group. My first impression of Sydney is that it’s a friendly city, and combines some of the best elements of the great cities of the world.