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Year: 2009

Lier, Antwerp, Herentals and Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog, Oh My!

Lier, Antwerp, Herentals and Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog, Oh My!

We headed for what may be our last weekend away without Sprocket before the little one comes. Sprocket was more than happy to spend time with Oma and Opa. We got caught in horrendous Friday afternoon rush hour traffic and the GPS, in an attempt to avoid one jam, routed me through most of the rest of the Netherlands, including two other jams it hadn’t known about. I left the Utrecht area at 3:30 or so and got to DutchBoy’s…

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The Zuiderzee Museum

The Zuiderzee Museum

Again taking advantage of our museum memberships and a lovely late September afternoon, we headed off to the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuisen. It’s another outdoor museum, a collection of old buildings and other heritage stuff. You take a boat from the parking lot to the museum and then get to wander around in buildings and such. I can see going back there when the kids are older as there was a lot of cool stuff for them, including dress up clothes…

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Weekendje Weg

Weekendje Weg

How could we not take advantage of the grandparents’ willingness, even eagerness, to take Sprocket for a weekend, his first away from both of us, so we could have a weekend away together? This first time, we planned on just one night of separation to see how it went. I went down with Sprocket on Friday afternoon, in order to spend a little time trying to get the motorbikes going – after many delays and traffic, I didn’t have enough…

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Open Air Museum

Open Air Museum

The Openluchtmuseum (literally “Open Air Museum”) is a collection of restored historic buildings, staffed by people in traditional costumes. They do traditional crafts (and naturally, sell the products) and have activities for the kids. But mostly, it’s just a very pleasant place to walk around in, with lots of interesting things to see. We’d been meaning to get there for a while – we bought these museum year cards (free entrance to many museums for only €35 for the year…

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Home for a visit

Home for a visit

We had a wonderful three weeks in Canada seeing friends and family. Of course, there’s never enough time to see everyone or do everything that we’d like to do while we’re there, but we did the best we could and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Of course, my major regrets were that I couldn’t have sushi or the lovely microbrewed beer as I’m pregnant again, but I’ll just have to wait until next visit. The first week we spent time with my…

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Inburgering, or a multitude of exams

Inburgering, or a multitude of exams

Since our vacation because it’s been pretty busy and somewhat stressful for me. On the 22nd and 23rd of June I did the Staatsexamen II. What this is is a proficiency test for Dutch that fulfills the inburgering requirement – if you fulfil that requirement, you become eligible to get an indefinite-term residence permit or even citizenship. The requirements vary depending on the situation, but for me, because I’m a spouse a Dutch citizen, I can get citizenship after three…

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Camping in Switzerland and the South of France

Camping in Switzerland and the South of France

There’s a reason we tend not to make reservations. The plan was to spend two days getting down to the South of France, spend a week there and spend two days coming back. Only that last part ended up being true. (see the map at the bottom of the post for our route). The reason for this vacation was that DutchBoy had Thursday and Friday the 21st and 22nd of May off because of Hemelvaart (which sounds cooler than Ascension…

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Keukenhof

Keukenhof

A very traditional Mothers Day. We went with DutchBoy’s parents to the Keukenhof. We’d won tickets in the bank lottery he plays and a lovely sunny Mothers Day seemed the perfect day to go. It was beautiful, and though busy, not so busy that it was overcrowded. And by around five, everyone had gone home for dinner so it felt almost deserted and we got to wander through the flowers at leisure. I took quite a lot of pictures and…

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Lisbon

Lisbon

A week in Lisbon, how lovely and warm! Except it wasn’t, and it was here. But despite the weather we really enjoyed our time in Portugal’s capital. We flew out on Good Friday, a holiday here. We had a bit of a worry in the morning – Sprocket was running a fever and we wondered if we should be going at all. But, a quick call to the doctor assured us that we should be fine. Sprocket wasn’t the happiest…

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Kinderdijk

Kinderdijk

Today we went with a visiting Canadian friend to another World Heritage Site, Kinderdijk. Again, while nice enough, it was hardly on the scale of an Angkor Wat or some of the other sites I’ve seen. But it was pretty enough, and quintessentially Dutch, with windmills and dykes and polders (the areas of land inside canals), as you see here. Sprocket quite enjoyed his time in the back carrier, as he usually does. Me and my friend. A swan in…

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Muider Castle

Muider Castle

Off to the medieval castle of Muider, the Muiderslot (slot = castle) today. The occasion was a visit from our friend A, who’s staying with us a few days – she’s American but since she’s a flight attendant it’s easy for her to come visit. She arrived early in the morning and made her way down to Utrecht. After a quick nap for her, we headed off. Signage to Muiderslot was a bit confusing (as always, you can click on…

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Weekend in Limburg

Weekend in Limburg

Maastricht is commonly held to be one of the loveliest cities in the Netherlands, and Limburg is the only place with hills, so when Dutch Boy got a night in one of a chain of hotels as his Christmas gift from work (he actually got to choose out of a catalog), we knew where we wanted to go – Houthem, a small village two train stops from Maastricht. We reserved for Saturday night and then added Friday at the last…

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