After writing in the morning, I decide to spend the rest of the day happily and wirelessly connected to the Internet in the 350-meter-range hot spot at the Heinekenplein, which I am thinking is going to be the best of the connection possibilities that Al has tracked down for me. It's high time I got online.

I start by jumping on the Segway and heading for Frank's Smoke House. I immediately notice an advantage of going out by yourself. Giving up the companionship lets you choose your pace, which allows you to see much more. If you are following a determined bicyclist, you have to keep your eyes mostly on the pavement. Amsterdamers are proud of not having the potholes found in most American cities, but there are still pavement irregularities that are quite sufficient to down a Segway.

Being able to take in the scenery has a nearly immediate reward. About halfway along the Prins Hendrikkade from the Centraal Station to Kattenburgergracht there is on the left toward the IJ an extremely interesting modern building. It's really quite dramatic, and my new map has a graphic depiction of it with the word, "NEMO", I later check with Rina and discover that this has nothing to do with Disney or Pixar. Rather, the reference is to Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, and the building serves as the equivalent of San Francisco's Exploratorium...a hands-on science museum for children that is in fact greatly enjoyed by children from 3 to, oh, 75. The architect is Renzo Piano. Rina has a connection and may be able to arrange something special.

All my life I have blundered into situations in which something special is arranged by kind friends. Like the time back in the mid-eighties when my friend Charmazel had got an appointment as a Reader at the Huntington Library. The tourists get to go through the display room and peer through heavy glass at an Elsmere Chaucer, an early Gutenberg Bible, one of those copies of Songs of Innocence and Experience that Blake printed and hand colored, and other showy things. Pleasurable enough. But the Readers, and only serious scholars like Charmazel are given appointments as Readers, have work space of their own and are given free access to the stacks!

Yes, the stacks. The stacks where the enormous collection of rare books that Mr. Huntington gathered from all over the world is kept. The enormous collection that Huntington's heirs ended up using as a tax write-off so that they could keep for themselves most of the 666 gazillion dollars that Huntington amassed by plundering California. To ensure our cringing gratitude, their name is chiseled in granite over the door.

But anyhow, since Charmazel's dear friend Louis was visiting from San Francisco, she took him in to meet the library staff who, like everyone else, just loved Charmazel. And since we were already in there we kind of swung through the stacks on our way out and I got to reach out with trembling fingers and remove from a perfectly ordinary looking library shelf 250-year-old first editions of works by Dryden, Swift, and Pope. I didn't hold them long for fear my hands would start sweating and sully them.

And since we were in the library, there was nothing to stop us from strolling over into the botanical garden, which in those days was open to the public only on Sunday afternoons unless you had a letter of admittance. These letters were obtained by requesting them politely by letter in time for the garden to reply before your visit. No telephone calls, please. We said hello to Charmazel's gardener friends on the way to the largest outdoor cactus and succulent collection in the world. I started addressing them all formally in Latin, but then dropped this stuffiness, fell on my knees, and kissed as many as possible before Charmazel's patience was exhausted.

But there I go, digressing again.

At Frank's, an employee I don't recognize comes to the counter, and when I start ordering in Dutch, I am somehow dumbstruck as I try to think of something that I can say in Dutch while he cuts my halibut and tuna. So I stand there saying nothing, and I fear that I have come across as unpleasant at best. A highly unsatisfactory experience, and the chill of it strikes me harder as I am examining my map to plan a general route over to the Heinekenplein.

Contributing factors are that the wind is gusty, there's a bit of mist in the air, and I am wearing the thin cotton windbreaker that I foolishly brought on this visit instead of my little black jacket. However, I am not deterred. I should be, but I'm not. I decide to go on out to the end of the Oostenburgergracht, turn right, and consult the map again after I cross the Amstel, a terrain feature I feel sure I can't miss.

Almost immediately I encounter one nifty piece of modern architecture after another. I must study the Guids voor Moderne Architectuur in Amsterdam by Paul Groenendijk, Piet Vollaard, and Piet Rook that Rina lent me. It covers about a hundred 20th Century buildings but, alas, was published in 1987. The contemporary architecture here is just breathtaking, and while I'm as much of a San Francisco chauvinist as anyone, I have to say that our offerings are just plain pitiful in comparison. What I particularly love here is instances in which stunning new buildings are nestled with those hundreds of years old and, because the new is in scale with the old, the combination works. Well, it's of course more than just scale.

But it is sure not pic weather today. As I ride along, the wind picks up and the mist becomes a drizzle. I close the last inch at the top of my so-called windbreaker. And then I encounter an Albert Heijn in a neighborhood where I feel more comfortable leaving the Segway. Don't really need much, but might as well grab a few items since I'm here. Besides, it turns out to be just as warm and dry and toasty inside as it looks.

As I pick up other items, I'm looking for flour so that I can make the cream sauce for that Asparagus Cockaigne in Joy of Cooking that everybody likes and that I plan to make for Hans and Rina since it is high asparagus season here and I really enjoyed Rina's white asparagus last night. Of course the hidden agenda is that I'm going to make this dish with green asparagus to demonstrate that, contrary to the bias of de Duitse volk (by which I refer to the Germans, the Dutch, and the northern half of the Belgians), green asparagus can actually be eaten with enjoyment by humans...and with a lot less tedious peeling by the cook.

As I shop, I am struck by how often we identify common foods by their packaging long before we are close enough to make out words on the container. For example, everybody knows that salt occurs naturally in a thin cardboard cylinder approximately 8" high and 4" in diameter. The cylinder is most often blue but can take other colors. Unfortunately, these conventions frequently do not cross international borders, which adds another dimension to shopping in a foreign country when you are after a specific ingredient and forgot your dictionary and have no idea what the packaging looks like over here.

After an extended search, I leave Albert Heijn without the flour. Apparently, flour is simply not sold at that branch. To celebrate my exit, the drizzle increases to a light rain that, as I gain speed, seems more like sleet. As I cross the Amstel I decide that I don't really want to sit in the Heinekenplein today.

But since it's so cold and wet that I don't want to stop long enough to consult my map, I decide to just follow the Centrum signs until I spot something I recognize. Somehow, at the time, this seemed perfectly reasonable. Perhaps my brain was already so chilled that thought was impaired. This may have also been a factor in my going ahead and running at full speed until the thought penetrated through the cold that rolling along at high speed on wet bricks set in a herringbone pattern with deep gaps between them would, if I fell, simulate falling onto a giant cheese grater at 20 KPH. I slow down a trifle.

I finally admit to myself that I really do have to stop and look at a map when it sinks in that, after following a lot of Centrum signs, 1) I have no idea where I am or even what direction I am going and (2 I have traveled a considerable distance. I also remember that in many congested cities the Centrum signs are designed to direct tourists in automobiles in a wild goose chase to keep them from impeding downtown traffic. By this time my hands are not functioning well because of the prolonged cold and wet, so I'm fumbling a bit trying to get my pack open when I happen to look up at the street sign on the building around the corner of which I have moved to try get out of the main blast. It is Prins Hendrikkade. And then I look around and realize where I am. I have made a giant semicircle and am now back about four blocks from Frank's, no closer to home than I was thirty minutes ago when I decided that I was so cold and wet that I had to immediately head for home.

I finally arrive home seriously chilled. I take off my wet clothes and jump in bed, so exhausted that I fall asleep for a couple of hours. When I awaken, I realize that it is nearly 8:00 P. M. on Herdenking, the Dutch equivalent of Memorial Day, when the Queen emerges from the door of the old palace, walks slowly across the Dam, and places a wreath at the foot of the monument to the war dead. Other dignitaries place wreaths beside hers, and there is a two-minute silence. Owing to the weather, I elect to watch this on television.

I am profoundly moved by the ceremony, as I am by the honesty of Dutch television, which shoots the event from a distance sufficient to reveal that on this cold, rainy evening so few citizens have turned out that the Dam is not completely filled. Sure, there are thousands of people present, and if the cameras had just zoomed in a little bit, the impression could have been given that the square was jam-packed. Like that footage shown on American television of Iraqis thronging the square as Saddam's statue was pulled down. What the American audiences didn't see was the footage and stills shot from other angles that showed that the throng was in fact only a hundred or so Iraqis artfully arranged in front of the statue.

For the remainder of the evening, Dutch television shows wartime films, including a very interesting documentary on the Dutch Nazi party, the National-Socialistische Beweging der Nederland, NSB for short. My Dutch is far from good enough to follow this very well, but I do catch a particularly delicious piece of Dutch humor. At one point during an NSB rally, when the leader shouts "Heil Hitler!" a heckler shouts back, "Heil Rembrandt!"