Mission Impossible

The Task: Get from Rotterdam Central train station to St Pancras, London. 

The normal way: Take one train from Rotterdam Central to Brussels South Station. Change here and catch a Eurostar to St Pancras. Easy right? 

I arrived at Rotterdam Central station at 8:50 on Tuesday morning only to find that my 8:55 train, and actually all trains from Rotterdam to Brussels, was cancelled. On the way to Amsterdam we noticed that this was the case over the Easter weekend but thought that maybe it was just because it was Easter weekend and surely it will be fine when Bron needs to catch a train to London on Tuesday morning, right? Wrong! 

New Task: Get from Rotterdam Central station to Brussels South Station by 12:30 pm in order to catch the Eurostar to St Pancras. Mission impossible? 

After a brief moment of panic, I asked the guy at the info kiosk how am I supposed to get to Brussels today? The answer was catch a train the 9:08 train to Breda and then catch a connecting train to Brussels. Sounded way to easy and I had a feeling that he wasn't giving me the whole truth. I was right. I smsd my amazing husband who sent back a list of connecting trains complete with station name, platform number and time of departure. Thanks love! 

The list went like this: Catch the 9:08 from Rotterdam arriving in Breda at 9:33. Then catch the 9:52 to Roosendal arriving at 10:11. Catch the 10:34 from Roosendal arriving in Brussels at 11:42 with enough time to catch the 12:29 to London. Sorted!

Except there were no trains running from Roosendal to Brussels either which they only announced 5min before the train was supposed to arrive. So I caught the 10:37 stop train (read: the train stops at EVERY station!) to Antwerp which took about an hour. At Antwerp I finally caught a train to Brussels. Another stop train of an hour though which meant I missed the 12:29 train to London.

Mission failed!

Travelling is not for sissies! Fortunately Eurostar changed my ticket to the next available train which was at 14:29 arriving in London at 15:29 (16:29 European time). So I finally got to London at 15:30 and home after 4pm but at least I made it. What a long and stressful day! And I have getting back laden with luggage to look forward to! Oh yay. Really hope the trains from Brussels to Rotterdam are running by then!! Chances? The website isn't helpful either because it has all the train times but doesn't say whether the trains are running or not.

After a traumatic day I took it a bit easy yesterday. I did pop into the SA shop though and was assaulted by the smell of biltong in the air. What a good smell!! I resisted the temptation to buy any though. Next time I might not be as strong.

Today I am going into the city to check out a few things. After some warm sunny weather the temperature has dropped again and it is cloudy and cool with rain predicted for the Royal Wedding tomorrow. Apparently the rehearsal at Westminster Abbey last night was 'breaking news' on BBC yesterday. How sad. It is a long weekend here (Fri and Mon off) so looking forward to hanging out with Michelle and Graham.

News on Justin's side is he had his first bike ride to work on Tuesday which went well. And cricket practice went well on Tuesday with no hassles after hurting his shoulder at practice two weeks ago so that is good news. It is Queen's Day on Saturday celebrating the Queen's birthday (actually the previous or even previous Queen's birthday) which is a big day. Everyone takes to the streets and wears lots of orange. Bleak I am missing it. Sunday is also a holiday (1 May) but in the Netherlands the Monday is not a holiday if the Sunday is a public holiday. But next year we will have Mon and Tues off due to the leap year =) 

Hope you all had a good Easter and that the Two Oceans marathon was a goodie if you ran it. I will still post a blog about our Easter weekend activities. Hopefully soon, but might only be when I get back from London.


Have a good week and enjoy another long weekend!!

x

Home Sweet Home

Note: this post has been edited since posting! Have another look =)


Realised it’s been 10 days since the last blog post, how did that happen? This last week has been a jam packed one for us and the best intentions to post a blog just didn’t work out.

Our furniture finally arrived on Monday afternoon, yay! After waiting around hopefully all day the delivery van finally arrived at about 5pm. When only two crew members of Abel’s movers stepped out of the truck, I wondered whether they would be able to carry all our goods up the stairs! They surprised us both and with a little help managed to get everything into our apartment. Unfortunately there are a few scratches on the bannister as a reminder of the day, but our landlord was very relaxed about it, fortunately for us. The sum of unpacking on Monday consisted of assembling the bed and rummaging around in a few boxes to find bed linen!

We also had our first guest on Monday night: Gary whom we met on our Contiki ski week in Hopfgarten in Feb. Gary ran the Paris marathon on Sunday and decided to come for a short visit. Very brave considering we didn’t know if we would even have a bed for him, but it worked out well in the end. Monday Gary did his own thing while Justin was at work and Bron waited for the furniture to be delivered but we had a pleasant dinner out together in the evening. Tuesday was spent exploring Rotterdam a bit and just hanging out before catching the train back to Paris and London. It was awesome to have you Gary! Come back again soon! Next time our place won’t be crowded with boxes, lol.

Wednesday morning we had an appointment with the Gemeente and immigration (IND). The Gemeente is the local authority and after registering, a Burger Service Number (BSN or sofi-number) is issued which is required for opening bank accounts etc. At the IND, Justin registered as a ‘member of the Union’ which enabled Bron to apply for a residence permit. Fortunately, it all went smoothly and we are now both registered at the Gemeente and received stickers in our passports from the IND reflecting our immigration status. Justin can stay in the country as long as he likes but Bron needs a residence permit which takes 3 months to process and issue. In the meantime, the sticker in Bron’s passport allows her to stay and is valid for 6 months, so up to Oct. Hopefully her residence permit will be ready by then!

Bron spent the rest of Wednesday tackling the task of unpacking boxes and turning our place into a home while Justin went back to work. It’s amazing how just having our own bed in our room made our apartment feel more homely! Unpacking went much quicker than anticipated and by Thursday evening all 100 items had been opened, checked and mostly unpacked. But we were left with a mammoth amount of packaging: boxes, paper and bubble wrap! We were able to take all the paper to the recycling bins close by on Friday but we still have all the boxes to get rid of which will be more challenging.

Unpacking boxes was a bit like opening Christmas presents; usually way too much paper and you never know what's inside! There were many I-forgot-we-had-that moments and also many warm memories of when we were given or purchased a specific item. This made unpacking more fun than I thought it would be. Fortunately, nothing was really damaged during the move. I wasn't sure what to expect when unpacking boxes, especially glassware and crockery, but nothing was broken or missing. Only the plastic washing basket and dishes drying rack were cracked but we can live with that. Also, the sleeper couch which was damaged when our goods were collected in Cape Town has been repaired and repaired well which we were surprised and happy about and relieved that we didn't have to mission to have it repaired on this side.  However, most of our things smell like they have been in a box for four months which is keeping the laundry lady busy! All in all, it was not a bad experience but we are not in a rush to move again in a hurry!

Although all the boxes were unpacked, there was a bit of arranging to do and so the weekend was spent organising our place. We made another trip to Ikea in Delft to buy some clear plastic storage boxes to organise the storage space upstairs and a few other bits n bobs. We still have the challenge of working out where we to put all our pictures and artwork on our skew walls. Another challenge was finding a universal adaptor to convert our SA electrical plugs to European ones. We could not find a single universal adaptor in the whole of Rotterdam! How ridiculous is that?! Confirms the non-tourist status of this town! lol. In the end we decided to replace the SA plugs with European ones instead of using adaptors. Not what we originally wanted to do but will probably work out better. Our place is feeling a lot more homely and cosy and we are enjoying living here =)

Another thing that has to be sorted out is our hot water. We have hot water but the temperature in the shower constantly fluctuates between hot and freezing cold, very annoying! It’s interesting because we don’t have a geyser, the boiler from the central heating system heats our water for the bathroom and there is a separate heating unit for the kitchen. Very weird! Our landlord has been really friendly and helpful though and came to check it out and also had a mechanic person here on Friday to look at the boiler. A part in the boiler is broken and needs replacing which will hopefully happen when the mechanic comes again tomorrow. Third time lucky! Here’s hoping for a proper hot shower on Wednesday!

Can’t believe it is Easter this weekend! We found out today that Easter Friday is not a holiday here but Monday, Tweede Pasen Zondag, is a holiday. Surely Friday is the more important day? Apparently Ascension Day and Pentecost are both public holidays, but Easter Friday isn’t. Very strange!

Plans for the weekend include a day trip to Amsterdam and Keukenhof and possibly exploring Delft. We wish you all a blessed Easter! Hope you have a good weekend and lots of family time. We will certainly be thinking of our family and friends back home and missing Sunday lunch at Granny’s! Travel and arrive safely if you are travelling around and sterkte to anyone running the Two Ocean’s marathon in Cape Town on Saturday! Also, congratulations to our friends who have recently become parents for the first time: Nick and Carolyn, Andrew and Sarah, Andre and Nikki, Frank and Abi. We are stoked for you guys =) Wishing you all the best and much happiness!

Have a great Easter!

x

Our room with inflatable mattress and sleeping bags prior to the furntiure delivery

Tulips!

The empty lounge

The balcony with our newly planted tulips =)

The arrival of our furniture! 

Let the unpacking begin!

Our room with a bed in it

Heading to the paper recycling bin. We took 20 black bags of paper away!! 

Justin's new BFF, the 'vaatwasmachine' 

PS: Pics of our all new unpacked box-free apartment will be posted once our pictures are hanging on the walls!

PS: Dad Cross, where are the much promised comments on our blog??  =)

Ikea. Do you?

Apologies,again, for the slowness of posting blogs! This post pertains to last week's activities...

A whole week has passed since the end of our travels and our arrival in Rotterdam. How fast is this year going? It’s already April! Yikes! Easter is almost here, again. We are seriously missing hot cross buns, haven’t seen any around Europe. Please have some for us! We’ll trade, stroop wafels for hot cross buns ;~)

This week saw Justin’s first cricket practice and the first day at his new job. Besides not having played for about 10 years and pulling a poof, cricket practice went really well. Cricket here is a bit different to SA. Apparently the pitches are a lot slower and there isn’t much bounce. Players from overseas also seem to be more all-rounders rather than a bowler or batsman. It was nice to meet some people and everyone at the club made us feel very welcome. It was also interesting trying to find a sports shop that sells cricket gear, there is only one in town! One sports shop we went into didn’t know what cricket was, hm.

Justin’s first day of work also went very well. He was shown around the company, given a computer and a new project! They don’t waste any time here. The first project is in Nigeria, hoping an assessment or other visit is not required!  There are still forms to fill in and other admin to sort out but most of it is in Dutch so some help is required. But he felt very welcome and thinks he will settle in well. We were invited to a farewell party for someone in another division on Friday night. We gate-crashed the party a little but everyone made us feel welcome and it was nice to get out and meet some people. 

This week we also visited Gouda on Thursday. Thursday is market day in Gouda but due to the rain it ended early and we missed most of it. Gouda looks like a nice quaint little town though, it has a much older-chilled out feel about it. We will have to come back on a nice day to explore! We did manage to get some cheese at a local cheese shop; a camembert and Gouda Black, matured for 24 months! It is hard, has a strong flavour and is smelly but is very yummy!

We also discovered the Rotterdam market on Tuesday and Saturday. It is quite large, in the streets near the city centre and you can get everything from socks to flowers, fresh produce and furniture. Initially we weren’t that keen to check it out but I’m glad we did! The markets here are so different to the craft or flea markets in SA and everybody seems to shop there. The fresh produce is much better priced than in the supermarket, if you are feeding a family the market is a good place to shop. We bought some fresh cut tulips and some sprouting tulip, hyacinth and narcissus (daffodils) bulbs to plant. Our little place is looking very colourful! We will definitely be back at the market!

We watched another movie this week, The King’s Speech, also in English, yay! What a good movie! If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it! Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush really do a good job, it’s very inspiring. People in the ‘bioscoop’ here talk all the time, it is most annoying! Since most people are reading the sub-titles they don’t need to listen so yak away. At the beginning of the movie along with the switch-your-mobile-to-silent message, there is a message to please keep quiet now, but the silence doesn’t last very long.

Justin also managed to open a bank account on Thursday. The Gemeente said it would take two weeks to get an ‘ID’ number but fortunately for us it arrived in the post after two days. So, in the last blog post I had it wrong. We thought we need a V-number to open a bank account but we need a sofie or burger-service number (BSN) from the Gemeente which is what we got. We will also get a V-number but that is after registering with immigration or the IND, don’t think we do much with this number. So now that we have a bank account we can start the process of getting a landline and internet at home. However, it’s a little more complicated. Apparently there can only be one account and cable per house and there is already one at this address and since we are not number ‘a’ and ‘b’ we are not sure how to go about it. We need to chat to our landlord and the service provider together and work something out. It’s a little complicated & I don’t understand it but it has to get sorted so watch this space.

We also survived our first real Dutch conversation with little to no English, lol! Our landlord’s Mother lives one floor below us and there was a leak from our kitchen basin into her linen cupboard. She has no English whatsoever and we have very halting Dutch, lol! Was interesting but we managed. She is a very sweet lady and has made us feel very welcome. We also met with our landlord again, he came to check out said leak, and has also been very welcoming. He was surprised to find that the apartment was still empty and immediately offered us a mattress etc. We are very lucky to have found such hospitable people to rent from. We think we will be happy here and are looking forward to being unpacked and settled. We think it is important to learn Dutch to integrate here and experience Dutch life in the full. People at Justin’s new work told us about some options for courses which we will investigate soonest.

Today (Sunday) we took a trip to Delft. We needed to get some bookshelves and a new lamp for our place so we thought we would go see what Ikea is all about. Delft is a really pretty town! We really liked it there. It is similar to Amsterdam with many canals but the pace is much slower and more chilled out, it is a student town after all. We will definitely have to come back to explore! Ikea was a bit different to what I expected it to be. The products are set out as rooms in a home so you can see what it all looks like together and work out what you need. Then you go downstairs to the self-help pick-up and check-out section. They have practically everything you need for starting a home; from beds, to couches, kitchenware and everything in-between. Ikea is more pricey than I thought it would be but they do have quite a big range so it is possible to find what you are looking for in your price range. Due to our skew walls we are limited to what will fit in the straight parts. We managed to find a reasonably priced cube with divisions that will work as a bookshelf. They were however 19 kg each which made for an interesting trip home on the bus, train and tram! We could only carry one box each so the lamp will have to wait till next time. After a few that-doesn’t-look-right moments, we have assembled bookshelves! Yay! They are pretty simple but we like them and they will work anywhere in our place. All we need now is for our books to arrive…

Our furniture is still scheduled to arrive on the 11^th of April. We also have our first guest staying for one night on the 11^th. Our friend Gary whom we met on our Contiki ski week in Hopfgarten in February is coming to stay for a night after running the Paris Marathon on the 10^th. Murphy’s Law that our furniture is arriving on the same day, sigh. Hopefully we can still do some fun stuff together.

Other than that, this week holds more of getting back to normal. Justin has his first full week of work since December and cricket practice again on Tuesday. Bron has another cold and is trying to get better! There is also the Rotterdam Marathon on Sunday so we will be keeping a low profile as public transport will be limited. Other than that we are enjoying exploring Rotterdam and are slowly getting to know the area around our place.

Until next time, hope you are well!

x

The Box 

The contents

The assembly

The finished product!

Safe and Sound

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently. We had a technical difficulty loading posts at our accommodation in Paris. We are not sure if it was an internet connection issue or a problem on Google’s side. So please find below the Lisbon and Paris blog.

We arrived safely in Rotterdam on Friday afternoon after a good week in Paris. We had a few things to organise in order to make our empty apartment comfortable for the night and next two weeks until our furniture arrives. We managed to buy sleeping bags in Paris and on Friday we acquired an inflatable mattress, towels, a set of pots (to boil water and cook with), and a few other odds n ends. At least our place already has a fridge, stove top and washing machine. We had a cosy first night’s sleep which was made more comfortable by the purchase of two feather pillows on Saturday!

After another admin-filled day on Saturday we headed out to Keukenhof, the gardens in the bulb growing area of Lisse, on Sunday. Wow! So many colourful flowers! Tulips are the most well-known of the bulbs cultivated in and exported from Holland but there are many more. They also grow many varieties of daffodils (Narcissus family), Amaryllis, Hyacinths, Irises and many others. We thought we would see the miles and miles of colourful fields one hears about but Keukenhof is just the garden within the fields, lol! Next time we plan to see more of Lisse and the surrounding area; apparently there is a 32 km stretch of colour to see!

Keukenhof is only open for two months in Spring. The gardens opened last Thursday, 24 March, and are open until 20 May. It is still early in the season, so not everything was in flower and the trees do not have leaves yet. But we bought a Spring pass so we will be back a few times! Ditto with the bulb fields, hopefully next time there will be more colour. Also, I think Keukenhof staggers the planting of bulbs so that there is always something in flower throughout the season.

The theme for this year is Germany (one of the main importers of bulbs and cut flowers)  and there are different activities and shows on at Keukenhof every week. This week we saw the Amaryllis, Freesia and Tulip show and the Orchid show (which I think is on all season). The Orchids were really impressive! Such a different and difficult to grow plant! We really liked them. We bought a little Orchid which we have named Oliver. He is quite small in size and his flowers are small too. His flowers are a light yellowy-green colour which goes well in our yellowish apartment!

I didn’t know there were so many different types of Tulips; there are varieties in every colour and size imaginable! There are tall ones, shorts ones, large flowers, small flowers, very open ones, more closed ones, double petals, frilly-edged petals, stripey, solid colour, mixed colour, wow, so many! One of our other favourites were the miniature Irises; small plants with fine tiny flowers. We are feeling inspired to grow our own Tulips! We have a little enclosed balcony and plan to put some flower boxes there.

We also saw the Keukenhof Windmill. So I worked out why Holland has so many windmills, it’s because it is so windy here! It’s like living in Cape Town…. From far windmills look like they move so slowly which makes them look lethargic. But once you get up-close you can see that the arms actually move quite fast! There is quite a complex mechanism in the windmill which required some intricate engineering! We hope to be back at Keukenhof again soon!

This week is mostly an admin kind of week. We need to register, investigate opening a bank account, investigate different internet contracts, organise work gear for Justin (first day on Friday) and other things. We started the process of registering today. Justin registered at the Gemeente (local authority) and we made an appointment for registering at the IND (immigration); the earliest date we could get is in two weeks’ time. In order to take out any kind of contract we need to have a bank account (so that the amount can come off automatically each month) and to do that we need a V‑number (ID-type number) which we can’t get until we have finished the registration process. It will be at least two weeks until we have a V-number and probably another two weeks or so after that until we have a functional line. So it’s a little complicated and will be a while until we have everything sorted. In the mean time we will check email sporadically at the library. We also have a pay-as-you-go sim‑card for now. If you would like the number, email us and we will send it to you (don’t want to post it on the web).

Some other info is that daylight saving time started on Sunday (27 March). The clocks moved forward one hour so we are now the same time as South Africa. Sunset is now at 8 pm, yay! Come on Summer, come on! Having said that it is still quite cool here. We do have some sun but it is not as warm as it was in Spain, Portugal or even Paris. Hoping that changes soon! We watched our first movie on Saturday night, ‘Rango’! Lucky for us most of the movies here are in English and subtitled in Dutch as are most of the foreign TV shows; which will also help us to learn the language. Justin is keen to play cricket this Summer and we were fortunate to meet a captain of a team during our week here in Feb and his first practice is on Tuesday evening (30 March), wish him luck!

But for now just to let everyone know that we are safely here and enjoying our new little place. We are slowly getting to know our area and are having fun exploring. It is also good to be back in a place where we understand at least some of what people say! After travelling around Europe we feel that the Netherlands was a good choice for a first European country to live in; amongst other things it will be much easier for us to integrate having an Afrikaans background.

Until next time, sterkte for Two Oceans training! Please email us and leave messages on the blog, we love hearing from you!

x

PS: What happened to our cricket team?!

Smelling the flowers at Keukenhof (yes, tulips do have a scent!)

Tulips at Keukenhof

The windmill at Keukenhof

Fresh hot stroop wafels, yum!! What a treat! 

Pancakes in Paris

Bonjour!

What a great week in Paris! Seven consecutive days of sunshine, temperatures in the high teens, flowers everywhere and sunset after 7pm; the promises of summer. We love Spring!

Last week Saturday we arrived in Paris after an easy flight from Lisbon, except for the usual mishaps at security. Again no passport control, I love Europe! Sunday was our first day to explore and after sorting out some admin we headed to the Arc de Triomphe. After climbing the stairs to top we were greeted with amazing views over the city, from the Grand Arch to the Sacre Coeur past the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower. Wow! Definitely worth the hard climb up! The rest of the day was spent orientating ourselves in the city and planning the week ahead. We decided to get a 4 day museum pass which meant we had access to 60 museums in Paris and theoretically skip the queues. After walking down the Champs Elysees, we made our way to the Rodin museum to see the famous Thinker and other pieces by the sculptor. We liked the setting of the bigger pieces in the garden and smaller pieces in the house. After popping into the Louvre to get a map it was time to head back to a home cooked meal! Our accommodation had a laundry area and our room had a kitchenette so we got back to a little bit of normality this week doing laundry and making our own dinner. Maybe we missed out on some French cuisine but it was good practice for the weeks ahead; Justin was able to get the creative juices flowing again! Paris was very busy and vibey on Sunday and it was a good welcome to the city.

Monday was an early start at the Musee du Louvre. I didn’t know it was originally a palace, it’s absolutely massive! I think we were feeling a bit paintinged-out when we were at the Louvre because we didn’t see as much as we wanted to although we were there for about 4 hours. The museum was also very full being one of the only museums open on a Monday. We did however see the Mona Lisa and lots of cool statues including Michelangelo’s entrapped slave. We were planning to come back on Wednesday when the museum is open until late but it didn’t happen. Next time!

Next stop was the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The queue to walk to the top was a bit long so we just went inside the cathedral. It is huge inside with many little chapels. Also very busy with a choir rehearsing for a concert. After the Notre-Dame we made our way to the Pantheon. Modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, it also has a dome and many columns; an interesting design for a church. Many great French citizens rest in the crypt, including Marie and Pierre Curie, the chemists who discovered radiation, and Victor Hugo, the writer who wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Almost time for sunset, we headed back to the Arc de Triomphe for views over Paris at sunset. Last stop for the day was the Grand Arch at La Defense, a business centre with many tall buildings. Much bigger than the Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Arch is a hollow cube with enough space to hold the Notre-Dame!

Tuesday morning we headed back to the Notre-Dame and braved the queue to climb the stairs to the top. It was well worth it! The views over the city were awesome and it was kewl to get close to the gargoyles and other creatures that watch over the cathedral. We couldn’t however see the flying buttresses from the top as they are on the other side of the cathedral. We saw the great bell of the cathedral and the wooden bell tower. The bell weighs ~3 tons and the clapper about half a ton. A team of 12 ringers is required to ring the bell and it is only rung on special holidays. The bell tower is made of wood to absorb the impact of the ringing bell so as not to crack the figures and rest of the cathedral. How did they get it up there all those years ago?!

After the Notre-Dame we headed to the Musee d’Orsay for a fix of impressionist paintings. Originally designed as a railway station, the outlay of the museum is very interesting! Many stairs to would-be platforms and a great clock to keep the time. The museum is home to a real mix of art including works by Matisse, Monet, Manet, van Gogh and Cezanne as well as a section on photography and many sculptures. The less random of the impressionist era, for more random modern art head to the Centre Pompidou!

Last stop for the day, the Eiffel Tower! We ascended the North Pillar right to the top. A bit early for sunset but still kewl nevertheless. Although it was a beautiful sunny day, it was quite windy and cool at the top. Awesome views over Paris, a bit different from so high up, 376 m! It was a bit hazy but apparently on a clear day you can see as far as Chartres Cathedral 72 km away.

Wednesday we started with Les Invalides, home to the Musee de l’Armee and Napoleon’s tomb in the crypt of the Dome church. We saw Napoleon’s tomb, a huge red sarcophagus, the church and also walked through some of the museum’s collections. The parts we saw were the armoury, housing a vast array of ancient armours, the section on Charles de Gaulle and the section depicting the history of France from Louis XIII, Napoleon and the Revolution. Very interesting but obviously from the army’s point of view. Since visiting Paris, I feel inspired to learn more about Charles de Gaulle and read the story of Quasimodo!

Next we made our way to the interesting Pompidou Centre. President Pompidou had a vision for a place dedicated to modern art and the Pompidou Centre was born. An interesting ‘modern’ building, you feel like you are in a Guinea pig cage going up the escalators closed off with plastic pipes on the outside of the building. Matisse, Dali and Picasso are featured here and are the more tame of the modern art. There is also an emphasis on photography and other visual and audio arts such as movies and music etc. There are a lot of random pieces and we didn’t stay too long, lol.

Thursday was our last full day in Paris and also the last day of our holiday touring Europe *sigh* Our museum passes were up (only 4 days) so we spent the day exploring outside areas. Feeling melancholy, we headed out to the Luxemburg gardens. Originally the gardens of the Luxemburg Palace, these public gardens are full of joggers and sun worshippers even at 10 am on a Thursday. We love people gazing and enjoyed watching groups practising Tai Chi and the old retired gentleman playing tennis, what a great way to pass your retirement in the Spring sunshine! A walk down Boulevard St Michel to the Metro station and onto Place de la Bastille. There isn’t anything left of the old prison where the French Revolution broke out, but there is a monument to the victims of the revolution in the middle of the square. Many cafés line the square and we enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere over a croquet monsieur and sugared crêpes. Also in the area is Place des Vosges, a beautifully manicured square surrounded by 36 houses. Once the home of aristocrats, today the area is lively with antique shops and cafés.

Feeling a bit better, we headed to Montmartre on top of a hill, most well-known for the Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge! I love the Sacre Coeur, it is one of my favourite churches in Europe. Even though it was pretty busy inside, it was still quiet and peaceful, unlike other European churches we have been to. It is a huge church and well decorated but not overly ornate like so many others. We enjoyed walking around the streets of Montmartre with many patisseries and artists. Eventually we found the Moulin Rouge! It is in a bit of a dodgy red-light district and we didn’t hang around too long! It is still open though, and for between 90 and 180 euros you can have dinner and watch a show including the French can-can.

After a busy week it was time to pack and get ready to head back to Rotterdam. Although we are sad that our holiday has ended, we are still at the beginning of our adventure and have many things to look forward to! Paris is only 2.5 hrs from Rotterdam on a high speed train which means we will be back for many weekends away! Other nearby places we want to explore include Brussels in Belgium and many parts of the Netherlands. Our first Netherlands adventure is a day out to Keukenhof on Sunday, the colourful bulb fields!

Justin starts his new job next week Friday (April fool’s day, a coincidence?) and we have a confirmed delivery date for our furniture. Our goods arrive on the 11^th of April so we have about 2 weeks of an inflatable mattress and sleeping bags. We managed to acquire two sleeping bags this week but still need to find an inflatable mattress and some other odds n ends to make the next few weeks comfortable. We don’t have internet at home yet but the blog will continue when we are set up and organised! =)

Daylight saving time starts on Sunday morning. The clocks switch forward one hour at 2 am so we will be the same time as South Africa until the last Sunday in October when daylight saving ends. We are looking forward to even longer days but still find the idea of changing the time strange!

Hope you are all well and that Autumn is treating you kindly.

x

Arc de Triomphe by day...

....and by night

The Eiffel tower

Rodin's the Thinker

Musee de l'Armee at sunset

The Louvre

The Mona Lisa

Michelangelo's entrapped slave

The Notre Dame

Stained glass windows at the Notre Dame

Gargoyles watching over the city

Sunset from the Arc de Triomphe

View of the Grand Arche and La Defense from the Arce de Triomphe at sunset

View of the Eiffel Tower from the Arc de Triomphe at sunset

At the top of the Eiffel tower!

View of the Arc de Triomphe from the Eiffel tower

Armoury at the Musee de l'Armee

View of Montmartre and the Sacre Couer from the Arc de Triomphe

The Sacre Couer

In Montmartre

The Moulin Rouge

Last night of holiday dinner