Above: the beautiful cliff side village of Positano on Italy's Amalfi Coast.

The Two Crabs are currently on vacation in Europe -- our first time back here in over 3 years. One of the great pleasures and benefits of this job is we have made friends all over the world. Our first stop was Naples, Italy to visit our friend and supervisor from my previous post. She's one of the best consular officers I've ever met so naturally I consider her a mentor. Our next stop was the Netherlands to visit with some old friends from our previous lives. 

While in Holland, I had the pleasure of meeting my hard-working colleagues at US Consulate Amsterdam. One of those officers turned out to be a fan of this blog and reminded me that it's been ages since I've updated this blog. Part of the reason is I've been super busy in Calgary but the main reason is pure laziness -- it's a lot easier to just update my whereabouts on Facebook for friends and family. But I forget there are many folks who aren't on FB or whom I don't personally know. So my belated New Years resolution is to try and maintain this blog better whenever I have a free moment. I'm drafting this post on a long train ride from Amsterdam to Groningen, a beautiful little city in northern Netherlands.

Incidentally, European trains ROCK. In most places in Europe, you can set your watch to train schedules and now many trains have free wifi. My biggest complaint however are train prices. The romantic notion of grabbing a EuroPass and backpacking Europe by train is long gone. It's now much cheaper to just hop a low cost airline flight. That's how we got from Naples to Amsterdam: 49 euros per person one-way! 

A few more photos of our trip so far: