Ange's visit

Ange arrived on Sunday from her secondment in Vancouver. We of course took her to an Argentinian steakhouse (the old Amsterdam favourite).








After a couple of days of exploring the city Cherilyn-style this is what Ange looked like. Note that she is fading into the couch...

Monday Road Trip with Dad

On Monday we got up early (although not as early as we'd intended) and headed for the Delft province. This is where they hand-paint the Delft porcelain tiles, vases, etc.

We went to the sole remaining factory and painted a tile each.

Then we went on a wander through the museum part. There were heaps of really old Delftware that were pretty impressive. There are also some special Christmas things they do every year. The Christmas plates have been produced since a long time ago (can't remember exactly but it was ages...) and since then they have added some christmas bell ornaments and other things too.

Here's me with the Christmas plate display - different every year.

After a spot of shopping at the giftshop, we headed to their cafeteria for some pie and coffee. Dad had some Dutch apple pie (and so did I). It was so yummy!!

Dad's visit - the relatives continue

On Sunday we headed out to the other side of the family, in a little town outside of Haaksbergen. Dad decided he knew where it was, so we drove for 20 minutes before we realised we were going in the wrong direction and had totally missed our turnoff.... but never mind.

So we arrive at Gerard and Annie's house and there is already a piece of cake sitting in front of each of our seats. It was coconut and it was goooooooooooood......

But I digress.

Here's Annie and I

And here's Franz, Gerard and Dad

Gerard is Caroline's dad's brother, and neither he nor Annie speak English. Well, not much. I think at the end of the day Gerard did say to us 'Thank you very much'. They were very worried about the english-speaking visitors arriving and so had convinced 4 other relatives to come along so that we could have translators!


Here's Dad with Josie

And me with Ine and Nardy (Ine is the wife of Franz, in the photo above)

We had such a great lunch (and afternoon) and then some of the honorary translators took us to Jeroen's farm (he is possibly the son of one of Caroline's cousins... at this stage I'm getting really hazy on all the connections...). We saw a little calf that had been born at 10.30 that morning! It was still all covered in goo, sitting in a little stable in the dell. Very cute, and very interesting. We went into the barn where all the cows are living for winter. They were mostly very curious about us and were sticking their heads out into the middle area. I reached out to touch the head of one of them, and it stuck its tongue out and tried to lick me! So I got scared and pulled away. And then after that, none of them would let me near their heads. I wanted to pat a head, but oh well. (Such a city girl here!) Then, Ine was scaring the cows (accidentally) with her umbrella. It was certainly a strange sight - 50 huge cows all jumping in unison.

After that we went back to Gerrit and Josie's house for coffee, cheese some leftover easter eggs and more biscuits. We didn't even need dinner that night because we had so much snack food and coffee! Franz and Ine live next door so Franz brought over his computer and showed us lots of the family photos that he has been collecting (including wedding photos of relatives basically as far back as cameras were in existence - very impressive).

This is the only group shot we got from Gerrit and Josie's house - unfortunately that's me looking like a zombie in the middle.

We were there until about 11pm, and Gerard and Annie had come with us so they were out very late too!

Here's my favourite photo of the day - Annie hamming up to the camera with her dish brush and the rest of us cracking up. So much fun!

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!

Scott's trip, Cirque du Soleil and Boom Chicago

Scott arrived late on Tuesday night (after the big Easter weekend). He had with him a crunchie bar! And some Reece's peanut butter cups.... mmmmmmm.....


We set him up a foldout bed in our lounge that we borrowed from one of the managers at work.


During the day he explored the city (he was here on secondment two years ago but they travelled so much he hadn't done the touristy stuff in Amsterdam!).


On Wednesday night all the NZ secondees, plus Scott plus Aussie Jen went to Cirque du Soleil - Varekai. It was AMAZING! The music was fantastic too, and I bought the soundtrack! I was terrified the whole performance that one (or more) of the performers was going to smack into one of the lighting towers while swinging around in mid-air, or that they'd fall off the strings or nets that they were holding onto. Kind of stressful to be doing all that worrying! But they were all very talented and amazing, no one fell or anything. The show was beautiful and the strength of these performers is just amazing. It has convinced me that I'll definitely be going to another Cirque du Soleil show, probably in Las Vegas.


On the Thursday night Kinga, Scott and I went to Boom Chicago - a comedy club run by Americans in the centre of Amsterdam. It was so funny! Some of the stuff they said was so true, they mentioned a number of things that had happened to me since I've been in the Netherlands. The same club has a late night show, which we're planning on going to for my birthday in a few weeks time.


Friday morning Scott jetted off to New York City - just a fleeting visit from him. He's off to the Cayman Islands to work for a bank. Bye!!

Easter in Spain - Part Three (Easter Sunday and Monday)

EASTER SUNDAY





Sunday was Day Two of our hop-on/hop-off tour. It was a gorgeous day so good for some blue sky shots. We saw the palace (including these columns at the bottom of the street that leads to the palace:

The road on the way to the palace -

And here's the palace itself -




It was pretty nice (from outside). We sat in the sun and I visited the most disgusting public toilets I've ever seen in my life - quite an experience!

Then we went up this gondola on the hill to a castle - the views over the city were gorgeous.



In the afternoon, the others went to a soccer game and I wandered around the markets buying gifts and looking at the artwork. I loved being immersed in the Spanish (and Catalan) and would love to go back!

EASTER MONDAY

Monday was for more shopping - lots of things were closed but I found this excellent little art/souvenir store. I wanted to buy so many things but there was the small issue of the fact that my suitcase was already packed full to the brim!

Easter in Spain - Part Two (Good Friday and Saturday)

GOOD FRIDAY

To our surprise most of the shops and things were open on Good Friday. Amanda and I looked around at the mall, had a wander up La Rambla, and generally hung about.

The first thing you notice on La Rambla is the crazy busker statues that are up and down the street. The costumes are elaborate and look like they'd be impractical in extreme temperatures.

Here are a couple we saw:

One of the first things you notice about Barcelona is that most of the 'landmarks' were created as part of the city's revamp for the 1992 Olympics, including this

And this...

The Spanish sure do love their monuments. The entire city is littered with them (most of which I have no idea what they're for).

Near the waterfront, at the bottom of La Rambla there is a statue of Christopher Columbus. He seems to be pointing out towards the water - it was put up to remember him setting off towards 'The New World'. Unfortunately he's actually pointing in the wrong direction, but never mind.

The waterfront is very pretty:

Amanda and I sampled some real Spanish Paella for dinner and then headed back to the hostel to find the boys had had a few too many beers and causing havoc in the hostel bar. We gently encouraged them to head off to the clubs, and hit the sack for an early night - it was going to be a big day on Saturday!

EASTER SATURDAY

Rebecca, Amanda and I got on a hop-on/hop-off tour around Barcelona, and saw some amazing stuff. The architecture of Spanish favourite 'Gaudi' is all over the city, including in 'Parc Guell' which was where he lived. Here are a few of the crazy things he designed -

Casa Batllo

Casa Mila (La Pedrera)

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia is this huge cathedral, started in 1882. It was left unfinished at Gaudi's death and construction halted during the Spanish Civil War in 1932. In 1940 construction started again (so the photos are all littered with cranes) and they expect to be done by 2026 (yes that's another 18 years!). All the construction is funded by donations and by the entrance tickets of tourists - no government or official church people are paying for it. Randomly, the Executive Architect is actually a Kiwi, called Mark Burry.

The design is incredibly detailed and very grand - there are three facades and will eventually be 18 towers. To look at it, you could stand there for hours. For starters, its huge. And you can walk right around it and see close-up literally hundreds of little features that Gaudi has designed for it. There is so much to look at and its not even done yet! It was very amazing, but the line to get in was so long that if we had gone inside we wouldn't have seen anything else of Barcelona!

We saw a few other bits and pieces too, like

The Arc de Triomf

The Building that doesn't reach the ground

and Spanish Starbucks!!

That night, we went to a Flamenco show and had Paella for dinner again (but at a different place).