We flew to the Netherlands two days before my (dreaded ) 30th birthday. When we arrived, my whole family was there to greet us! Not just my parents and brothers and sister, but the whole extended family including aunts and uncles What a surprise! They had organised a whole weekend away, and rented two minibuses to drive straight from the airport to Putten, a small town in the middle of the country. We stayed in a nice hotel there, in the middle of the forest. It had snowed a lot the day before we arrived, and the next day we woke up to a winter wonderland. There hadn’t been much wind, so all the snow was still lying on the trees, it was so pretty! After a breakfast some of us went for a walk in the forest. You’d think I’d get enough of snow after living in Tromsø for this long, but it was so beautiful I couldn’t stop taking pictures!

Kaya took Mare on the sled, though some of the way she sat on my dad’s shoulders. She was all wrapped up on her sled, wish I could be transported like that

Some more photos of the forest… I could have almost taken black and white photos, you wouldn’t see the difference!

A group photo of those that went walking (others went sledding or sat by the fire in the hotel), and a portrait of my parents.

That evening we also celebrated Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Christmas which is normally celebrated on the 5th of December. A lot of fun! The next day it was my birthday Everything was decorated and everybody was wearing party hats and singing for me, and I had a pile of presents – they really spoiled me

We left the hotel, but we didn’t go straight home. My sister had organised a “family day”, a new tradition that I’ve always missed as I am never in the Netherlands when she organises it. This time we went to a farm where we did a bow-and-arrow competition and a competition in traditional old-dutch games, which was a lot of fun They even had a version of shuffle puck (air hockey), no idea how “traditional” that really was but it was good fun. We also used the opportunity to take some rare family photos… unfortunately everybody is squinting into the bright sun, but I still like the photos – it’s not very often we have this opportunity.

The farm was located in the middle of nowhere, in a typical Dutch landscape. Now that I live surrounded by mountains, I was impressed by how flat it is in the Netherlands

What a great weekend I enjoyed every minute of it. We spent the rest of our week in the Netherlands enjoying the small joys of urban life – going shopping, going to the cinema, spending evenings in cosy cafes without going bankrupt Paul flew to London on Boxing Day, and I flew back to Tromsø a few days later, as I had to work during the New Year period.

The main reason I was in the Netherlands last week, was to attend the wedding of my friend Marjon. We’ve been friends since we were 4 years old, best friends all the way through primary school and even in high school we had the same group of friends. After high school, I moved to the other side of the country (and later abroad),  so we didn’t see each other very often anymore. Still, when we do meet, it’s like no time has passed at all and we just pick up where we left off as if we saw each other yesterday. I was very happy I was able to be at her wedding The bride and groom looked beautiful, the party was fun and it was great to catch up with old friends!

The next day, my parents asked me to join them on a trip to Katwijk aan Zee (Katwijk on the sea). They had heard about an artwork there that they wanted to see and take photos of. This artwork was dedicated to all the men from Katwijk lost at sea since 1925, and it was made of rusty metal with all the names (and ages) of the men cut out. Quite an impressive monument!

It was a sunny, but windy day – ideal for a walk along the beach. After convincing my mum that yes, we can afford to pay a euro to park next to the beach we went for a nice walk. It had been windy for days and the sea was quite rough – I love that! I took lots of photos of course, and so did my dad.

The sky was beautiful, I really enjoyed our walk on the beach. In Dutch we have a word for this, but it doesn’t translate to English. It’s called “uitwaaien”, which literally means outblowing, but I found this beautiful description by the BBC: “Words and phrases can suggest the character of a nation. The Dutch vocabulary, for instance, seems to confirm the nation’s light-hearted reputation. The word uitwaaien is Dutch for walking in windy weather for fun.” Cute It’s often used, sometimes more generally meaning you get some fresh air to clear your head from worries.

At some point, a lot of foam was blowing around the beach. I got a phone call from Paul (from Svalbard) at that moment, so I couldn’t take any photos. My dad took some great ones though, even catching the movement of the flying foam…

Later that afternoon, we invited my family around for coffee. Great to see everyone again! Of course I took a lot of photos of the centre of attention… my niece Mare Here she is fascinated by an hourglass.

Afterwards she went to pick a flower, then asked my sister to paint her nails. How girly especially since she was dressed all in pink that day. But to show that she’s not *that* girly, she also went around the garden to find snails that would walk on her hand

I had a great time in the Netherlands! Time always goes too fast, a week is gone before you realise. But next time is not so far away this time

Last Wednesday I visited the botanical garden of the University of Utrecht with my mum. I’ve never really liked the campus of this university, it’s full of very big modern buildings (I prefer the old universities ) and right next to the highway, which makes it very noisy. Even in the botanical garden you can constantly hear the noise from the cars. Still, the garden is like an oasis and very calm. There was hardly anyone there. We walked around for a long time, I always enjoy taking photos of flowers…

And my mum takes photos of me

We were very lucky, they had a special butterfly exhibition in one of the glasshouses. It was supposed to have finished the week before, but they extended it for another week – great! I took my macro lens with me, it was a paradise for macro photography The glasshouse was quite small and FULL of butterflies, it was easy to get very close to them. They are so pretty!

There was a bowl of fruit which attracted a lot of butterflies, and they’d sit very still eating their grape or banana. I love their big “alien” eyes!

There were also several butterflies mating – the girl who worked in the garden kept pointing them out for me She was very friendly. Some butterflies have such amazing wings, they really are artworks of nature!

Here you can see their long tongues… good thing they can roll them up

It was a windy day, but warm enough to sit outside and enjoy a cup of tea at the cafe in the garden. We spent several hours in the botanical garden, a nice way to spent the afternoon!

Happy 2010 everyone! Hope you all had a nice break Ours was very nice and relaxing. I’ll post some photos from the past weeks in the coming days, today part 1: The Netherlands. We were very lucky to escape cancelled flights on the way to The Netherlands. It was actually colder there than in Tromsø, and they had quite a lot of snow.

The day after we arrived was my birthday We went for a nice walk in the snow…

In the afternoon we celebrated Sinterklaas (St Nicholas) with my whole family. This is supposed to be celebrated on the the 5th of December, but this year we postponed it a bit! It was a really nice evening, we had lots of fun. As there are way too many pictures, I combined them to a collage. Plus a crazy photo of 2 Vikings under the Christmas tree if you take a closer look at the Christmas tree you can see that it has rubber duckies instead of traditional lights – the creativity of my crazy brother!

Snow in the Netherlands equals chaos with the trains, so we decided to travel to Amsterdam by boat. This “fast flying ferry” (aka hydrofoil) goes from IJmuiden to Amsterdam and takes only half an hour. A fun way to travel! Amsterdam looked pretty in the snow…

On our last day in the Netherlands we went to Haarlem, which was also looking pretty with all the snow and ice. It was very cold and windy though!

These swans were trying to climb on top of the ice, but it was too weak to hold them and they kept breaking it. Poor things, they looked very confused.

In the evening we went skating with my sister and my youngest brother. Paul had never skated before, so he started out with one of those “zimmer frames” as he calls them. We started out on the bit in the middle of the rink, where you can practice (while trying to avoid out-of-control kids!) Within an hour, his skating improved enough to join the “real” skaters on the outside ring, I was impressed! It was lots of fun, I didn’t realise how much I missed skating… I should find out about the rink in Tromsø.

The next day we flew from Amsterdam to London to have Christmas with Paul’s parents. To be continued…