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!