...and other flowers too. Basically anything other than Tulips! Although there were mostly tulips in the Flower Kitchen (Keukenhof), the other types of flowers they had were also equally beautiful! The whole place was bursting with colour, and there were also a few non flower photo opportunities along the way as well! One side of our trip that was less than perfect was our stop for food. As expected it was absolutely packed and there wasn't nearly enough seating for the amount of visitors. The queue for the food was huge and the people serving didn't seem very sure of what they were doing. Other than this however, I would say the trip went well - they even had free wifi around the gardens! Bonus!
Obligatory foot selfie
Miffy is Dutch...
as are Windmills!
We had to queue for this photo for so long, battling the terrible Europeans (German) queue hoppers! Not ever sure if it was worth it in the end...
As I vowed back in November, I headed to the Netherlands this Spring. And instead of just enjoying the flowers in the fields as the train nips through the countryside, Chelsea and I took ourselves off to the Keukenhof (which translates as the flower kitchen). So. Many. Flowers. Also so many people, but as Chels and I cannot stand rubbish pictures with loads of people in them, we will always wait to get a shot as free from other visitors as possible. This post is filled with my favourite flowers of all, the tulips; the Tulips from Amsterdam! :-)
So it happened. I couldn't halt the passage of time, and now I am no longer in my twenties. It mostly feels exactly the same. Although I had wanted to acheive a couple more things from my 30 before 30 list, I only managed one - which was to eat at Circus restaurant. This I did in celebration of becoming old! As luck would have it, the restaurant bumped up our party to the main table, which meant that we were right in front of all the circus acts for the evening. The restaurant was fantastic, the food amazing (which I wasn't particularly expecting) and the entertainment was interesting... It's definitely a novel concept and the performers are very good, especially to do their act in such a small space, with drinks and people so close by! I have to say that the music choices that accompanied the performers were a bit weird, and the toilets had quite ill-designed modernist shower like set up for washing your hands. But apart from those small things, the evening was fantastic! My friends arranged for a surprise birthday cake as dessert - which the restaurant kind messed up as they rang me the day before to ask what kind of cake I wanted! D'oh!! I would definitely recommend the restaurant, although it's very pricey so perhaps only for special occasions!
Netball Crew fun!
We celebrated Jasmin's birthday the weekend before as well!
Act 1 - Performed to Everybody Hurts by REM
She went from this...
...to this!
CAKE!
The following day, I had a smaller, more chilled out gathering at my parent's in Essex, with presents, sparkling wine and lots of nibbles!
When I visited Chelsea in November last year, I managed to squeeze in trips to two new cities along with enjoying Den Haag again. I already wrote about my day in Amsterdam when Chels was at work. The following day we headed together on the train to Rotterdam. I've always wondered about this city, since the Beautiful South sung about it. The weather was less than perfect, as it was rainy for most of the day and drab even when it stopped raining. To be honest, I think the song is quite right, Rotterdam could be anywhere... it didn't seem to have anything particularly spectacular going for it. After asking for some suggestions at tourist information, the lady sent us towards a famous bridge (Erasmusbrug). Despite the lack of tourist-y things to do, we still had a nice day. Encountered a very flamboyant make-up counter assistant in one of the shops, ate at the world's cutest cafe and stopped for tea by the harbour. I would probably go back, to see if a sunny day made much difference to Rotterdam's charms, and also to see the weird box houses!
Apparently the station is one of the attractions...
obligatory feet pic
Decorations left over from some kind of celebration by the river
Chelsea's calorie laden brownie and my weight watchers fruit bar :-(
