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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The mission: Christmas markets in Cologne (known in Dutch as Keulen and in German as Köln (and apparently in Spanish as Colonia – somehow my Google Maps started giving me Spanish names)). We left Sunday morning for the two hour drive to a park and ride on the outskirts of town where we took the metro into the city, a choice we patted ourselves on the back for once we saw the traffic downtown. Plus, I think we would have…
Zeeland was the last Dutch province Sprocket and I hadn’t been to, so of course, that’s where we went for a weekend away. We spent the weekend in a little town, Breskens. We rented a bungalow (the Dutch use the word for vacation houses) in a bungalow park close to the beach. It was quite nice – two stories, a bedroom, big bathroom and living area on the ground floor and two bedrooms (and a sleeping closet) and another bathroom…
When people asked where we were going on vacation, we pointed vaguely east and said “that way.” But even though we didn’t know exactly where we were going, we were determined to leave Wednesday night, 20 August. Of course, because it was us, that turned into very, very late on Wednesday. It didn’t matter so much since our first step was Dutch Boy’s parents, from whom we were borrowing a bigger tent. We got there late and only didn’t wake…
Today we took a short jaunt to Schokland, the Netherlands’ first UNESCO World Heritage Site (there are now several others). It was pretty sad compared to some of the other UNESCO sites I’ve been to, and I got to wondering just how many that was and whether I was just remembering the spectacular ones so I compiled a list. Turns out I wasn’t – pretty much all the other ones I’ve been to are better than Schokland. Schokland is a…
We have plans to go on a camping trip for the last two weeks of August. Normally, no problem, but we weren’t sure how Sprocket would react to camping. I’d done some internet research and consensus seemed to be that babies slept better than ever in tents and they didn’t need a special bed, just to be cuddling with the parents. So we decided to try camping with our existing equipment, just to see how it went. Our trial trip…
Going to Spain at the end of March is a wonderful idea – it’s nice and warm there, not hot, just pleasantly warm – and there aren’t too many other tourists. We left our house at 5 am in slushy snow on the 25th of March and flew into Málaga, stood in line for forever to pick up our rental car and drove it to the little house we had reserved in the village of El Borge, about 45 minutes…
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. ~Robert Louis Stevenson OK, we’re perhaps a little bit crazy. The weekend before the baby’s due date we decided to rent a car and go on a trip. Where didn’t really matter, and in fact we had no destination in mind. We did pack the hospital bag and baby seat just in case. By the time Dutch Boy got home…