My blog has been neglected for too long, and one of my New Year’s resolutions is to do something about this! One thing I want to start is a monthly overview of what has happened last month – where I can also share the small things (a photo or something that has happened) that otherwise would never make it to my blog. Here’s the first episode: December 2017…

The first weekend of December we went to our favourite sushi restaurant in Rotterdam: Itami. We’re testing out all the other good sushi restaurants in the city, but we keep having to conclude that nobody is better than Itami! It was a wonderful night with wonderful food 🙂

The next morning we had brunch at the Euromast, a famous observation tower in Rotterdam. This was a gift from Michiel’s sister, and we booked it some weeks earlier. The view from the restaurant is amazing, but we were very unlucky with the weather: thick fog! We thought it was quite funny though, especially since I’m a meteorologist 😉

While shopping for presents, I looked for the Prague Lonely Planet in Donner, my favourite bookshop in Rotterdam. Lonely Planet bought one of my photos, of a lunch I had with my sister in Prague. It was fun to find it in both guides (the pocket one and the larger one). I sell photos through Getty, so they end up all kinds of places, but Lonely Planet is probably the most exciting place for me!

Later that week we went for a very special dinner: a 6 course meal at Michelin star restaurant FG Food Labs. It was truly amazing – very original, beautiful (and sometimes fun!) presentation, fantastic food. I loved that they had a “BOB” version of their wine package. BOB is what we (in the Netherlands) call the person who doesn’t drink so he/she can drive. I’m not sure it would have been safe for me to drive after 6 half glasses, but I always find a full glass of wine with each course too much, and this was a nice solution! This restaurant is only 15 minutes from where we live, so no need for a car or even a bike. Here are some of the dishes we had that night…

On the first day with snow, we drove to the small village of Asperen to look at a house that was for sale there. I love this area, and the snow made it even prettier! I completely fell in love with the house, but Michiel didn’t. It was also only the first house we’ve looked at, and we need to think about what we really want and where we would like to live. We’re not in any hurry though, so we’re taking our time to work this out.

That night we drove through the snow to Amsterdam, where we watched Alison Moyet perform to a sold out Paradiso – it was fantastic! I love her voice, and the concert was amazing.

The next day we celebrated Sinterklaas with my family (we were 14 people in total) at our place. There was a huge pile of presents, and it was a really fun afternoon!

One of the gifts I got was this book about 111 places in Rotterdam that you should see – I’m looking forward to discovering all of them!

The next day it snowed, and snowed, and snowed! Until it looked like this…. (not the best photo quality, but it shows how much snow we had!).

Unfortunately all the snow rained away before I had a chance to go out and get some good photos. A few days later I went to Den Haag (the Hague) to visit the Escher museum (for the second time!) and Panorama Mesdag. You can read more about that day here.

The weekend of 16-17 December we stayed in a cabin in Reeuwijk, where Michiel’s sister lives with her boyfriend. It was a busy weekend, with 3 birthday celebrations and a lot of time in the car. I wish I could have taken more photos that weekend, because the weather was frosty, and the snow showers made for some fantastic clouds. I did take this panorama by the shores of the lake near our cabin 🙂

That evening we went to the birthday party of Jessica and Sander. The dresscode was these crazy Christmas jumpers…

And the birthday couple themselves, in very “special” Christmas jumpers (look carefully)…

The next day we took the scenic route to another birthday party, and stopped in some places where we might want to live. For example Montfoort, where this photo was taken…

It was my birthday on the 20th of December and I had already bought myself a gift months ago: I needed to use up some British Airways airmiles, and I booked a hotel room at nhow Rotterdam with a nice view. What I didn’t know, is that Michiel secretly upgraded this room to the Rem Koolhaas suite, and got them to decorate it really nicely for my birthday! Wow!

There was even a message on the mirror for me 🙂

We enjoyed a nice drink in the hotel bar…

And then tried another sushi restaurant, this time Azura. Very nice sushi, but still not the same service and taste as at Itami 😉

The suite had a fantastic view towards the Erasmus bridge and the river, but (theme of the month!) it was very foggy and the view in the photo below was the best we got that night (the next morning we couldn’t even see the bridge at all!)

Two days later I threw a big birthday party for about 25 guests. It was really nice, and I was pleasantly surprised how many people actually came in the busy days before Christmas, some travelling very far! It was a great night 🙂

We spent Christmas in Wageningen with Michiel’s family, where we had a very nice tapas style dinner. The next day we stayed at home, and went for a walk in Rotterdam. I loved seeing Christmas trees in the middle of one of the canals!

We walked outside the city and found some very Dutch skies and landscapes 🙂

Michiel had to work between Christmas and New Year, but I joined Jessica, Sander and family for a couple of days in Vaals in the south of the Netherlands. It was close to the highest point of the Netherlands and the three-country-border between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. We actually had snow again over there, and we had a great time going for walks, visiting the Christmas market in Maastricht, bowling, and playing boardgames. I will write a blog about our days there soon, so here I will just share one photo of all of us at the three-country-border point 🙂

During the last weekend of 2017, my two nieces Mare and Lena came to stay with us. We went to the zoo in Rotterdam (Blijdorp), which was lots of fun.

The rest of the time was spent making endless drawings, eating pancakes and refusing to go to sleep 😉 It was so much fun to have them visit, and I hope they come again soon!

We spent New Year’s Eve at home with just the two of us – a quiet cosy evening with lasagne and nice drinks, watching the fireworks from our living room. Happy New Year everyone!! May 2018 be filled with love, health, family and lots of adventures 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this monthly overview, I plan to continue them from now on!