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Published: April 24th 2007
With the congress closed, allowing Caroline and I to stop chasing Mum with a pad and paper as she would vocalise her “notes to self”, I set out on a potter day while Mum spent the day visiting hospitals with Sue. Up this street, down the next, it always is the best way to find the quirkiest corners by hiding the map, but not very time efficient, as I didn’t make it in time to visit Anne Franks house or The Hidden Catholic Church, instead getting back to The Dam just in time for dinner with the girls to plan our trip to the Tulips!
Looking at the menu in proved a slight side step! Mum knew the word for raw, to which we avoided, and she ended up with a beautiful chicken salad! Not so lucky myself, I landed a plastic burger.. Then found the menu in English :P
It’s not the typical itinerary of a 20 year old traveller to head to out the tulips, but then it’s not really all that typical for them to travel to Amsterdam with their mothers, so off to the Tulip Garden’s in their peak season it was!!
Mum
Hide & Seek
This one's especially for Nanna :)had only one thing on her agenda aside from the flowers and that was a windmill.. Mine.. Clogs, so we were presently surprised that by 11am when we could tick both off the list!!
Flowers in ever shape, colour and brand with the tulip farm not far from sight. From the top of the windmill it was row after row of block colour, and despite the crowds below we were easily bringing the average age level down a few notches and there were very few visitors limber enough to climb that high, so we had the view to ourselves!
The lake around the garden is home to the worlds only leased geese! Every 2 months the geese are rotated to avoid them becoming terrirtorial and attacking the visitors of the gardens - Mum and I thought it was possibly a new business venture for Dad to investigate at the Salvo’s!
While at the garden’s, Vic called to tell us she had arrived, and we made plans to come and meet her in Den Hagg (I’ve always know as The Hague!) with her mum for a tour and drinks, but when we got home later in the afternoon
to change and buy our tickets we learnt it wasn’t going to be quite the easy journey we thought it was..
$100 worth of tickets later, and an hour on the overland, we arrived at our destination - a gorgeous quaint city filled with more coble stones and even more bikes!
Wendy, Vic’s Mum, lives in Holland and works in The Hague. She and Vic took us up and around triggering memories of stores and night spots from when Vic was living there as a teenager.
Amazing towers, palaces, castles, and an active and present Royal Family which seems much more natural than the Windor’s in England (although now with news that Prince William is once again single, I may need to keep a closer eye out!).
Sitting in a beautiful square, we were once again left to translate a menu! Between Vic and Wendy we stumbled through the whole thing, as they very kindly tried to translate. Although Wendy has lived there for 7 years, not even her job requires her to speak Dutch, so she rarely speaks anything other than English. 30 minutes later, and I just ordered what the woman at the table
beside me had!! Hehe!! It was a gorgeous little restaurant, that as the night continued really sparked up, and it was great to have all four of us in the same country at the same time!
Riding the train home, it was very exciting to think that we had tickets booked to Belgium the next morning, and within 24 hours we would have had 4 meals in 4 different cities!!
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