After our wet experience in eastern Netherlands we went to the UK. The drive there was smooth and we stopped in a village on the way to get some fries with sauce. The Dutch have a limited number of sauces they put on the fries, mayo, ketchup, peanut sauce, garlic sauce, or any combination of above. A true Belgian eatery has at least ten to choose from, frightening.
As we noticed last time the ferry terminal of Duinkerk is nowhere near Duinkerk in a industrial area, boring. We decided to take a detour to get off the mindnumbing motorway. We had a pub dinner on the way and were reminded about the prices in the UK; I don't think there is a country in the world which equal these. We took the A roads and nearly got lost, lovely old English villages. At arrival at Edgeborough we had the old code for the gate, luckily a nice man who just pulled up helped us.
Next day we met up with Gem and Greg who just purchased a house! Congratulations! Scary, big commitment. We saw some photos and are impressed.
We did a lot of shopping and more wandering around the weather was generally nice and we enjoyed being able to understand people.
On Monday we went to see Hazels friend Claire who has a nine month old baby, Matthew. The poor boy has a muscle disease which makes breathing and sitting up amongst other things rather difficult. We noticed how much attention he needed, we admire Claire for giving him so much love and attention and not giving up on him. Unfortunately we recently got an email that Matthew died of a cardiac arrest, devastating news, we are glad that we could visit him and enjoyed his company, we are thinking of Claire an Jason, we will not forget Matthew.
Soon it was time for us to return to The Netherlands again. To cut the travel in two and not arrive at our friends place at midnight we stayed in a B&B near Brugge. It was a lovely place, because it was warm we had the window open. We did not notice the pond in the garden, so in the middle of the night I went up to kill a mosquito, we ended up killing SIX. We left in time so we could stop at two well known touristic attractions: The Carrefour in Antwerpen and the Ikea in Delft, yes we are sad people. Hazel had a fight with the toilet lady in Belgium, she didn't accept small change (fair enough) but did want to give small change back and was surprised that we did not accept that. The Ikea meat balls were good as always.
In the Hague we had a nice evening in with our hosts Andrew and Emma. Had two much wine and talked nonsense as usual. My course started the day after and it was difficult to stay with it being still half drunk. Friday Emma had her 40th birthday party, we have a lot of friends in common, so this was a lot of fun. Even though it was hard the next day we still went out to do some shopping, we have to make most of it. Even on Sunday we went out, be it not for long.
My course was about development aid. I learned why we do it, how and what the pitfalls are. It was nice mixture of colleagues which made interesting discussions. Wednesday evening Emma and Andrew went on holiday so we had the house on our own for a day. We went to a new hotel at Schiphol airport Thursday night,
Citizen M. It is a modern hotel with small rooms, but lots of gadgets, for example you could change the colour of the light and choose to have it above the bed, in the bathroom or combined. Fun.
Friday morning we got up early to check in for our flight to Barcelona. We were surprised by the amount of people at the check in. We forget it was holiday time and the half of The Netherlands was flying that day. So after three quarters of an hour waiting in the queue and not being any closer to check in we decided to complain. The lady said that regrettable we were to late for the flight. I wanted to say something I can not put on the blog, however we stayed cool, not super polite. We did make it clear that if they know so many people are flying, it would have been smart to have more people on and have orderly queues. There were several people missing flights. The lady said it wasn't her fault (technically true, but it was the fault of the company which she is spokesperson for) and she put us on the next flight at 13.00. So we had to kill hours at the airport, what fun. So in stead of having a full day at Barcelona we just had enough time to have a drink sort out the tourist info and Barcelona card and find ourselves a meal.
Despite the slow start we had a lovely time in Barcelona - and the
hotel was full of character. We liked strolling around the streets and sitting and watching people. In Rwanda there are no places to sit and watch people, even worse, we are being watched all the time, a black man picking his nose for example is normal, but when a white man does it it apparently is special. The flight back was uneventful, still find it strange how Dutch people applaud when the plane lands, do you also applaud when the baker gives you his bread, well baked baker!
The last few days we spent in Amsterdam, we had an apartment (Weesperzijde) so we could make our own breakfast and tea etc. It was mostly dry so we could wonder around. We shopped in the Kalverstraat, had a 'broodje kroket' near Rembrandtsplein, saw Kungfu Panda at the cinema, had an Indian meal near Leidseplein, went to the Rijksmuseum and of course got some cheese at the Albert Heijn. It was funny being a tourist in your own country.
This time we made sure we had enough time when we arrived at Schiphol to go home. There were huge queues again, luckily the business class queue was slightly smaller. The queue for customs was big again. We went to buy some duty free and went straight to the KLM lounge, we'd seen enough of the airport last time. At boarding there is a special queue for businessclass which makes things easier. The lounge is cool, free coffee with stroopwafels and even alcohol if you choose so. We made the most of the flight drinking our welcome champagne wine before, with and after lunch. We had two middle chairs, so couldn't see out the window, we watched some films instead. I can get used to this businessclass travelling! The cost of the taxi from the airport went up again, they know that at an airport you have little choice.
Our cats were happy to see us and are constantly asking for attention, they had to investigate all our luggage thoroughly as we parked it in temporarily in the hallway. We are glad to see them healthy and not mad at us.
We will put up some photos at our next blog.
