Getting Ready

In just a few days, I will be on my way to Holland to visit my daughter. I don't like to fly, so I am taking two lady friends with me. We will fly from San Francisco directly to Amsterdam, an 11 hour flight.
My daughter will meet us there and then we will take a taxi (a van) with all our luggage and go to her house in Haarlem, about a 30 minute drive.
There's a nice article about Haarlem at wikipedia.
My sister is going to house-sit; cat-sit and water the yard. She is going to be very busy. Her gardener is going to come over while I am gone and remove 3 peach trees, prune back an over-grown vine and do some other clean-up in the back yard.
It's going to be so nice when all that is done. I have some ideas of different plants to put in the back yard this fall. So exciting!
But, back to getting ready. Thursday evening, I slammed the car door on my thumb. then the pain in my hip kept getting worse. By Saturday I decided I had to do something about it. The doctor's office was closed and also the chiropractor's. So, I went to Urgent Care, got a shot and 3 different kinds of medicine to take for the pain in my sciatic nerve. Good grief!! Is my body trying to tell me to stay home? Too late now.
I will be taking lots of pictures and post them on flickr. We plan to ride on canal boats and maybe have lunch on one of them; go to several museums, including the Anne Frank museum. One friend will fly to England for one week to meet two cousins she's never met before and see where her grandfather was born and raised.
While that friend is in England, my daughter will take me and the other friend to Friesland and Gronigan in the north part of the Netherlands. I am hoping to find something in Gronigan to prove my Dirks ancestors were there.
Sorry I don't have any pictures to post here, but my daughter has a nice picture of an old church at the market place in Haarlem. We'll be seeing lots of old buildings.