For pics, a bit-of- everything shot through the Pelikaanbrug:

Plus a look into the hippo's mouth:

After another futile trip over to Edward's in the middle of the afternoon, I return home via a stroll down Kalverstraat to the big bookstore, where I flirt with a two-volume Frisian-Dutch, Dutch-Frisian dictionary until reason prevails. I keep toying with that old plan to just skip Dutch and head straight for Frisian.....then I remind myself about those thirty-something damn vowel sounds, plus the nasalized forms that a number of these take before certain consonants. Death by vowel, since most of them don't occur in English and thus verge on impossible to ever get right unless you hear them as a child.

Then I paw a 2002 Grote Bos Atlas, a graphical display of knowledge feast, but I decide I'd rather fill my suitcase with food than books. I can order these books off the internet from SF and probably get them for less even with paying the shipping. What I can't do in SF is get some of the foods that I can bring back.

I get back here in time to watch the last couple of sets of Safin vs. Ferrero. It's always nerve-wracking to watch Safin play because you never know when he's going to disintegrate. Today, he took the first two sets after hard fights, blew the third 1-6, but somehow pulled himself together and took the fourth in a tiebreak. He drives me crazy. He was a tennis god in the Australian Open this January, but I don't think he's been even close to winning a tournament since. Still, I watch him every chance I get.

This is one of those days in which nothing of note seems to be happening, so I'll use this opportunity to mention that there may be some radio silence in the near future. I have a reservation to pick up a car at Hertz on the 31st, so of course the forecast is for rain. Well, hell, I figure since it rains all the time here anyhow, I might as well see the countryside in its natural state.

I'm kinda antsy to see Fryslân. And maybe to pick up this Frisian grammar I've read about that's in English, Frisian Reference Grammar by Pieter Meijes Tiersma. I'm thinking surely there's be a bookstore in Leeuwarden (spelled Ljouwert by the Frisians) that'll have it since the Fryske Akademy is there.

So I probably won't have time or inclination to be writing while I'm traveling although I will, of course, be checking my email if at all possible. You all know how I am about typical tourist stuff, but I have to say that I expect to be unable to resist taking the auto ferry over to Terschelling or one of the other islands.

You know...waves lashing at the railings while the captain tells the white-faced crew to act casual about it but go ahead and batten the hatches.

Well, at least it'll be a rental car.