It is an experience to travel these days. Not like it was in the old days (she says pulling at all the bags and wrinkles under her eyes). There are few to no humans involved in the check-in process anymore.
You flash your passport at a computer, it spits you out a boarding ticket, and then you put your suitcase onto a conveyer belt, puling down a screen door in front of it and off go your worldy possessions, and you hope for the best. Would you like to know more?
We had a purpose to our trip to Utrecht. Though I’m sure often it must seem that we just randomly go places and see what will happen when we get there (and sometimes this is exactly what we do), I also wanted to be able to achieve my purpose today. So I was on a mission to go to the Nijntje Museum.
Nijntje (or Miffy as most of the rest of the world knows her) is the brain child of one Dick Bruna, and as part of the Centraal Museum, you can visit his house and see how his design process works! Would you like to know more?
Some days you just have to get on a train, ride for twenty minutes, and end up in a different city altogether. The city we ended up in was Utrecht.
She’s a bit like Amsterdam’s older, smaller, quainter (is so a word!) … sister. Would you like to know more?
We have spent the week playing host to some visitors from Tokyo. Our little household went from Himself, I, and our three fur-kids; to seven humans and three fur-kids! It has been an amazing week in which we learnt lots of things about getting up early and resolving neighbour disputes. It was an interesting week!
Himself and I spent Sunday cleaning up the house and making it respectable and presentable to guests. Then off I went on the bus to Schiphol to meet everyone and bring them home. Say hello! They are pleased to meet you.
The local crocuses have bloomed and are now withering in the turf, waiting to be carved up the next time the lawn is mowed. They have been replaced by the daffodils nodding in the breeze along the sides of the roads and canals.
With this in mind I was aware that we’d have to be getting our butts to de Keukenhof shortly! I didn’t want to miss the massive explosions of colour like we kind of did last year. If you remember, we saw it in its dying stages only, and a lot of it was being dug up when we were there.
I knew this year all the tulips were running late because of the extended cold weather we’d been having, and I was trying to time it just right while still being anxious about missing it!
As our tour bus drove us past the flower beds which should have been full of riotous colour, they were still desperately trying to come into bloom, and hence, a little lacklustre. Though you can see the red beginning to peek through here, and some yellow off in the distance. Through the rain. Yeah, did I ever pick a good day to go!
Yes, apparently this year, not only did I pick a rainy day to go, but the flowers still weren’t in bloom yet!
Interestingly we thought, knowing that Keukenhof is only going to be open for such a limited time, and the weather wasn’t playing ball, they had brought in “ring-ins” to put down the walkways. You can see them here with the still green flowerbed to each side.
ghoti industries 