6th October Lieden to The Haig to Rotterdam

** Hi all. I must say the room I booked in Lieden has had the most comfortable bed to date. I would venture that this mattress is nicer than mine back in Perth.

** Feeling much better now that the Prednisone has had time to take affect. Between these medications and my oestio paracetamol I thing I have managed to control the cold . The weather over the past week has changed somewhat. The temperature for today has a low range of 12⁰ - 16⁰. I have been so busy waking early and heading off to the museums so as not to notice this temperature swing. Now bundling myself up when I go out.

**Today I head for the port city of Rotterdam and plan to spend two nights there. Because I am feeling somewhat better than the past two days I might yet revert back to my adjusted plan and stop off at the Hague to visit the Mauritshuis museum because it holds numerous works of Rembrandt & Vermeer, including Vermeer's 'the girl with the pearl earing. I can catch an almost local train to the Hague to be at the museum by the 10am opening time and most probably be on a further train to Rotterdam by 1 or 2pm.

** This ability to shift readily, quickly and cheaply from city to city is fantastic. In WA we certainly cannot do that other than around the Perth, Rockingham and Mandurah greater metropolitan areas. It takes my Tash nealy two hours to travel north to work every Tuesday and that is by plane. And it takes 4 to 5 hours to fly to the east coast cities.

** Rottadam is so very different to every other city I have seen so far in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam, Leiden, & the Hague. This comment is prely based on the style if the buildings. They are so western in design, at least the ones I have seen on the one kilometre walk between the central train station and my hotel. I have now been told that the reason for so few obvious 18th or 19th century homes is that the city was badly bombed by the Nazi airforce during the war. Unlike Dresden, the rebuild here was modern.

** My hotel is supposed to be a three star but quite honestly it's more like most of the two star hotels I have been staying at. The room is half the size of the one I stayed at last night.

** The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 was awarded to the French author, Annie Ernaux, "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory"

** The Mauritshius Museum in the Hague

I have fallen in love a few times in my life and at least twice while I have been on this journey. The first was while I stood in front of Renoir's "Girl in Blue", and the second was today when I stood in front of Vermeer's 'Girl with the pearl earing'. There is over 200 years between the two paintings but both artists managed to convey a sense of serenity, and timeless beauty.