Mountaineering

I am engaged to a mountaineer. Every summer he spends a week or two on the mountains, hiking along the Alps or the Pyrenees. I never joined, you see my body is not fit enough; so such a trip would be like a punishment to me.

However throughout the years I always thought it would be nice to join on these trips. Mainly because when I'm at home and he's away I'm always worrying that something bad might happen. Seeing that mobile reception is not really good at those altitudes (and sometimes there is no electricity to charge mobiles) I sometimes have to wait a couple of days before I get in contact with him. By that time I have a thousand and one possible bad situations.

This year we decided that I'm going to start training and instead of a hiking trip I will join on a course to learn mountaineering techniques. This course is though but easier than a proper hiking trip. The training will be across the next 6 months - I need to be able to hike for around 6 hours with quite some elevation on a day. Part of the training is going on regular long hikes, preferably in the hills as well as the usual (but more regular) gym sessions.

I'm not sure if I will be able to do this by August, but I'm definitely hoping I will be fit enough. And you know it won't hurt fitting in a smaller dress size either!

We already had a few hikes in the past weekend - it was quite cold in one of the days.

While the cat is away, the mice come out to play

The man of the house is away for the week. He's currently hiking a glacier on the Italian Alps. It sounds difficult and it is actually quite difficult. I do hike with him sometimes but I can only manage a number of kilometres on flat ground. On the other hand they will be doing hours of hiking going up and down on snowy mountains!

In the meantime the apartment feels quiet and empty. This means I have more free time on my hands, so I decided to catch up with my girl friends in Amsterdam.  A planned picnic turned into drinks and dinner due to rain.  I did say we are having tropical weather, it's still quite hot but we also had rain and thunder yesterday. We decided to go for a Teppanyaki dinner. Eating Teppanyaki involves having dishes of meat, fish of vegetables that is fried in a cast-iron griddle over a heat source placed next to the dining table. It was my first time eating this type of food and it was an enjoyable experience. Seeing the cook preparing the food directly in front of uswith such precise technique is pretty impressive.

Nippon is the restaurant we went to and is located in the center of Amsterdam, on Reguliersdwarsstraat. The service was of high standard and the food was great.