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Month: June 2007

The Netherlands (again!!)

The Netherlands (again!!)

Helloooo!

I’m sorry for the delay in getting new photos uploaded šŸ™‚ Three weeks ago we went to the Netherlands – again! My aunt was turning 60 and my parents had organized a surprise party for her, so they asked us if we’d like to come. We only went for the weekend, flying on Friday evening (slaloming around the thunderstorms) and coming back on Sunday night.

On Saturday we went to the Hague to visit the Escher museum. First we walked around the Dutch government buildings:

The Netherlands The Netherlands

The museum was in a palace, quite pretty! They had combined the Escher prints with some weird lighting made by an artist. I did like the shadows they made on the wall, but in some cases I thought the lights were too bizarre (a skull??) and didn’t really match with the palace or the museum. The museum was claiming to be an interactive experience rather than a traditional museum, but apart from the top floor (and the cloak room, see the first photo) I don’t think that was true. On the top floor, they did have some games to play, a room with distorted perspective (we had a photo taken where I appear a giant next to Paul, unfortunately their printer wasn’t working šŸ™ ) and – the coolest thing – a virtual reality walk through Escher’s world! Anyway, here are some photos:

The Netherlands The Netherlands

The Netherlands The Netherlands

The Netherlands The Netherlands

I did really like the museum, Escher was such a genius, I just love his work! After several hours in the museum we walked around The Hague for a while. There was some arty thing going on:

The Netherlands The Netherlands

We also managed to take this photo inside The Sting (clothes shop) before the security noticed us and told us photos were not allowed…

The Netherlands

On Sunday, we all got up early and we left for the beach. My aunt was there with her friend Guusje, who was also turning 60 just 5 days later. Guusje is an amazing person, she also makes great art. They were staying in a beach house and thought they were hiding from everyone – hehe. My parents had bought a special cake, normally only for people who turn 50. In the Netherlands, when you turn 50, you are called “Sara” or “Abraham” and there are lots of traditions involved, this cake is one of them. My aunt managed to hide from everyone 10 years ago, so we made it a Sara+10 party! Paul was hypnotized by the cake šŸ˜‰

The Netherlands

These photos were taken on the way to the beach, I’ve never seen such big onion flowers! Very pretty.

The Netherlands The Netherlands

We had some Dutch flags with us, and this is how we all walked to the beach house:

The Netherlands The Netherlands

My sister had bought them these wind-up grannies, they were hilarious!!

The Netherlands

Most of the morning was spent playing with them šŸ™‚ they even made a board to race on!

The Netherlands The Netherlands

My brother was brave enough to take a dive, even though the weather wasn’t very inviting. He didn’t stay in long šŸ˜‰ Here he’s running back to the warm caravan with my sister and his girlfriend Kaya:

The Netherlands

The part was a big success, everybody enjoyed it a lot! We took some group photos just before we left. The first one is all Luijting plus “aanhang” (Dutch for other halves, literally “followers” hehe). The second one all the old ones (hihi) – my parents on the left, Guusje in the middle, Marianne and Els on the right.

The Netherlands The Netherlands

After the party, Bart, Kaya and Paul took us to a kind of festival in a mental hospital. Euh yeah that is quite crazy šŸ™‚ They open their doors once a year and have a big festival with games, fun fair and people selling art. It’s a beautiful place! This one guy came up to me: Do you like polished nails? And before I knew it, I was asked to choose a color (Paul chose the most horrific pink possible!!) and he polished my nails. Not for money, just for fun… It was cute! It did end up everywhere so I was glad my mum had nail polish remover at home šŸ˜‰

The Netherlands The Netherlands

That’s all for now, I have many more photos, following soon… (really!)

Hanneke

Sailing & Mist

Sailing & Mist

Hello!

We went sailing last Saturday. Paul has a small sailing boat (an enterprise) that he keeps at a sailing club at Rollesby Broad. This lake is not connected to the rest of the Broads (though you can get to one other lake), and there is only one sailing club using it, so you can have the lake to yourselves sometimes! We sailed to a pub at the far side of the other lake, enjoyed a drink and sailed back. The weather was very calm, so it was easy sailing / sunbathing šŸ™‚ On the way back there was hardly any wind left so it took us a long time to reach the sailing club.

After returning, I got out and took some photos of Paul sailing, as he didn’t have any photos of his boat and the lake was beautiful at sunset.

Sailing Sailing

Sailing Sailing

I had a go as well! I took a sailing course for a week in 1999 and I hardly sailed at all after that, so I’m still (re)learning. I had never sailed a boat just by myself but when there’s hardly any wind there’s not much you can do wrong šŸ˜‰ Paul’s boat is very different from the stable boats I am used to though – it’s quite common to capsize this one!

Sailing Sailing

Here we were getting the boat back on land and cleaning off all the “sea” weed šŸ˜‰ (lake weed?)

Sailing

While we were busy taking the sails down etc, I happened to look at the lake, and mist was coming in at a very high speed! It was bizarre… in a few minutes a thick mist was everywhere. The sun was just setting and it was a spectacular sight, I ran to the jetty with my camera to get some photos.

Sailing Sailing

In the second photo (below) you can see the mist front moving over the lake. I’ve never seen mist coming in so fast!

Sailing Sailing

That’s all for now, hope you all had a nice weekend šŸ™‚

Hanneke