Can't Sleep

Well I got 2hrs sleep on the flight, then slept for 2hrs and then went out to dinner. Now it is 1:30 am and I am not sleepy. So, I took the pic below from the hotel we are in, the NH on the 19th floor. It was convenient not to have to walk from the train station very far. We will see how we can get to the conference location, Utrecht University, on Monday.

In the previous post, Mark asked, "Are you meeting any co-workers in Utrecht or are you on your own?" Well this is the conference that my research likes to make a big presence at. Consequently most of the research group will be going. I ended up going on the same flight as two co-workers: Praveen and Pradeep. And then when we checked into the hotel, Jon was already here. And now that I have a social netowork, I actually bumped into some high-ups at JPL while waiting for the plane too. And even while checking into the hotel I bumped into Jay Modi, an alumni of my research group from 2 yrs ago. Now if that wasn't enough, Jay, Pradeep, Jon, Praveen and I went to go searching for a place to eat in downtown Utrecht and the first place we checked, we bumped in Alessandro. He noticed us actually. Alessandro visited the research group when he was still doing his PhD and we became great friends. He is still in Rome, but now doing a post-doc there. Talk about knowing people ;) I oughta go to MBA school with Mark now.

Downtown was good and we got to eat a specialty dish of the Netherlands which is this pancake crepe type thing. Everyone rides bikes over here, though a few cars.

And did you know that Heineken and Amstel beer are from Netherlands? Neither did I. They are everywhere here.

Utrecht Central train station... at night 

Landed

Well the flight was a bit long, but they showed 2 good movies (Robots and Hitch) so I stayed awake for both of them and then slept for 2 hrs. I have made it to Amsterdam (as you can see below) and then I took the train to Utrecht which is where the conference will be. I am showing you the pic below partially for the airport, but primarily to show you the cloudy rainy weather that will probably be the norm here. And when I was sweating in LA and trying to pack my suitcase, I decided not to bring a jacket ;) Oh well.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport - arriving safe and sound and tired