Amsterdam

Woo hoo! I finally booked a flight and hotel for a week in Amsterdam. I hadn´t realized that the city would be that expensive during the summer vacation (also due to my late booking). An extensive search with our travel agent lead to expensive hotels rather far from the city center.
So I cut back on my wishes and booked everything by myself on the internet.



This will be my hotel for 8 days... tiny, perfectly situated in the centre of the red light district, close to everything and full of life.
The hotel has been rated as "pretttty dodgy", "rather depressing" and "dreadful". The club in the basement seems to be "EXTREMLY loud" till 5 am!
I´m only hoping that the shared shower and toilet are clean. But otherwise I´m pretty happy to have found an affordable accomodation right in the center of Amsterdam. See you there!

BTW: Zurich won the votes, but only by 26%. I was already looking for a place to stay there, but then decided that Zurich is a city where I am quite often anyway. So the Giger Museum still has to wait for a little while.

Where shall I spend my next vacation? (Poll)

I frequently used to go on vacation by myself until I met my husband, married and had kids. Last year I went on vacation alone, for the first time after 7 years and I enjoyed that so much. It is wonderful to have the power of decision for a few days.
So I decided that I will get myself some time off the family once a year on a regular basis.

This year I´m not sure where I should go to. If you have any recommendations let me know and take a second to vote at the poll on the right side please.
These are a few cities I would like to visit:

• Amsterdam (I love the city and the grachts, and so far I have been there 3 times, but always only for a day or two. I remember one time when all of us slept in one Fiat Punto throughout our visit. That´s pretty small room for 5 persons!)
  
• Madrid (There are still a lot of (Picasso related ) places I still haven´t seen there)
  
• Paris (I love the city, the food, the wine, the cafés, ...)
• Zurich (I would love to visit the Giger Museum in Gruyère)
• Valencia (Another beautiful Spanish city - not that I want to visit the food fight festival La Tomatina).
  
• Kassel ( I want to visit the Documenta - no chance to do that with the kids, but spending 7 or 8 days in Kassel??)
  
• Los Angeles (My favorite city originally named "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula" - "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the River Porciúncula" - but I guess way too expensive for this short trip)
  
• Other city (Any ideas? I love to visit new places)

So far I think Amsterdam is on my plan.

Last year I spent 9 days in Madrid, Spain and it was beautiful. I was specially lucky as Spain commemorated an overlap of Picasso-related anniversaries — from that of his birth 125 years ago to the 25th anniversary of the arrival of "Guernica" in a democratic Spain as stipulated in the artist's will. I couldn´t even have a look at all the Picasso events and exhibitions during my stay, but I enjoyed the larger ones.

Zurich Impressions - 2 (ATC)

While I´m still courageous I´ll quickly post another two BDSM-images which are older pics. Very quick... before I change my mind (Don´t want to know what some of you are thinking by now ;) )





These two atcs were made for a friend of mine in the UK. He asked me for them as he collects pictures of bondage women. Crazy British! Or should I say crazy Swiss? ;) (But I had fun drawing them.)

Zurich Impressions

A friend of mine told me to practice cross-hatching to improve the shadows and highlights of my drawings. I´ve never done that before so don´t expect too much. I did some cross-hatch-doodling of the things which came to my mind when I thought of Zurich. As you can see, I soon lost my patience and filled the space with text.



If you are wondering whether I met a vampire or a wolf: No, I didn´t!
Was I tied up with ropes? I´ll have to disappoint you again.
But I did spend 3 very interesting days and nights in this city and even if I won´t reveal any details (except if you guess the right thing) I can only recommend you to visit this beautiful city in Switzerland.