Dad's visit

I went to Schiphol twice on Friday - in the morning to drop off Scott and in the evening to pick up Dad!

We drove straight from the airport to Haaksbergen, a small town close to the German border. Caroline's family live here, so we went to visit them.

We arrived at the hotel to find no one to check us in - the staff were really spacey and weird! And of course dinner was over (even though it wasn't even 9pm yet, on a Friday).

We headed out to Buffalo Bill's, an american steakhouse for dinner. And Dad had just come from America, so it was a bit weird. Dinner was good though, and we had dessert too (also good). The menu was all in Dutch though (strange for an american steakhouse, eh?) and Dad was pretty impressed to hear my vague translation of the Dutch into English... although food words were pretty much my top priority once I got here!

On Saturday morning we went for a little trip around the area and Dad showed me the house that he and Caroline stayed in when they were here for about a month two years ago. Then he showed me this cool Water Mill which was nearby.

Complete with the original grain-squashing wheel from the 1500s:

Then we went into town and had a look around at the Church:

Including the bullet holes in the side of it from World War II:


Before having lunch at a little pub in the square. Then we went shopping a little, and back to the hotel. Being a small town, in this time we had three messages at the hotel from relatives wondering where we were. They knew we were in town of course, but someone had also spotted us eating lunch and had passed it around. Even people on Sunday asked us how our lunch was on Saturday and knew where we'd been!

In the afternoon we went to catch up with some Dutch relatives, Benny and Thea and their son Rudi. Of course a million other rellies showed up when they heard we were there!

We went for dinner at Miranda's house (she's in the red top).

Miranda and her husband Herbert have two daughters, Romy (7) and Manon (4). Romy is super keen to learn English, and showed us how she could count to ten and a couple of other things. She won't start learning English at school for a couple of years but she wants to know now! After dinner she dragged out her Dutch alphabet book and taught me some Dutch words!

Who else knew that Miffy (that rabbit) is Dutch? Her Dutch name is Nijntje (which means little bunny). There are stores all over here selling just Miffy stuff (well Nijntje) and the Delft ceramics even do a Nijntje line!