I just got back from more than a week in the Netherlands 🙂 it was an unexpected, last-minute visit. My brother Bart turned 30 and I decided to surprise him and show up at the party that my parents and sister organised. I was only going for the weekend, but then I could swap some shifts around and suddenly I had a whole week off – such a luxury!

Anyway, here are some photos from my brothers birthday. We played a game in the centre of Haarlem with 2 teams. We saw some nice places on the way, and ended up in a cafe. My team won 😀

The next day I spent the afternoon at Bart and Kaya’s, catching up and spending time with my nieces. They are so cute together! Mare is a proud big sister and Lena is a very smiley baby.

We went to a playground in the sunshine – a lovely afternoon!

The next day I went on a trip with Laura (my sister) and my mum. It was our gift for Mother’s Day 🙂 Our first stop was Purmerend, where there was supposed to be an open-gallery art day. It was very rainy and cold, and there was hardly anybody around, and it took ages before we worked out where to find the art 😀 but it was nice to see the centre of Purmerend and visit inside some of the artists houses.

Purmerend is quite pretty, even in the rain…

Our next stop was tea house ‘t Einde (the End – because it’s located at the very end of a village). We were having a really tasty high tea there 🙂 It was such a nice little place, on the water, with a nice garden. And lots of chickens walking around, they were really pretty.

The garden would have been really nice on a sunnier day. Shortly after we arrived, lots and lots of boats started coming in – it was a family party (of 40 people!) who came to have tea and cakes. Nice idea!

The tea house is located in Zuiderwoude, a village north of Amsterdam. This area is really pretty, with lots of water and typical grey-green houses.

That’s all for now, more photos of my time in the Netherlands coming soon!