Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

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!