Leiden

Yesterday I made the big journey across the country (!!) to pay a visit to the lovely little city of Leiden. It was a beautiful late summer day of bright blue skies so the 2 hour train journey was definately worth it.

Ostensibly my trip was to visit my friend Sarah and to collect some goodies from Tuckerbox, the expat store where she works. Yay ..... I had crumpets for breakfast this morning, and I now also have a small stash of Tim Tams, twisties, Crunchynut cornflakes, proper baked beans and VB :-) Sarah is originally from the UK and has been living in Leiden with her husband and 12 year old son since 2005. I met her through the expat womens' online forum :-) It was great to see her again and I had a lovely afternoon in Leiden.

Leiden itself is the site of the oldest university in NL (it is a twin city of Oxford, home of the oldest university in the UK), and is a bustling little city in South Holland on the Old Rhine, a branch of the Rhine delta. Like so many cities here in NL, water plays a huge part of life. The city is built around a series of canals and with such great weather yesterday every man and his dog were out and about in their boats. It was kind of funny to see everyone just sitting in their boats soaking up the sun, drinking coffee/tea, sipping wine, smoking fat cigars but NOT actually going anywhere. Most people seemed more than happy just sitting in the boat at the mooring!

As well as just wandering happily through the maze of little cobblestoned backstreets, browsing shops and watching everyone in their boats, I also paid a visit to the Hortus Botanicus. The Hortus Botanicus is the oldest botanical garden in NL (and one of the oldest in the world), and was established way back in 1587 for the benefit of medicine students at the newly established university. It has a fabulous and really interesting collection of tropical and sub-tropical plants, including the famous amorphophallus titanum (!!) or penis plant as us commoners know it as!! The penis plant is only found in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, and bears one massive flower every few years that is renowned for smelling of rotting flesh! Well I was lucky (!!??) enough to see one yesterday! The plant flowered on Monday last week so unfortunately by the time I got there yesterday it was already floppy but I could still get an impression of just how huge it must have been when "erect" ! See below for a couple of photos.

I also visited the Burcht, an old castle/circular tower built high up on a mound of earth. You can walk around the ramparts of the tower and get a perfect 360 degree view over the city. And the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting in the sun on the deck behind Sarah's new house, enjoying good company, good beer and the great view out over the canal. What a hard life!

Alli xxx

Hey, I dont speak French!

Jeroen and I spent last weekend camping in the Belgian Ardenne :-) We both managed to scrape together a 4 day weekend, so headed off on Friday morning and returned late Monday afternoon. After spending the whole week prior worrying it was going to be pouring with rain and be uncomfortably chilly all weekend, we were VERY pleasantly surprised that it didn't rain at all (until we were back in NL on the way home on Monday afternoon that is!) and the sun even managed to shine on Friday & Saturday.

All in all, we had an extremely relaxed weekend at a nice little campsite just outside the village of Han-sur-Lesse. The local area is SO picturesque - rolling green hills and plenty of forest, dotted here and there with tiny villages of quaint, grey stone houses (with even quainter names like Ave), and plenty to see, do and eat!

On arrival on Friday afternoon, it didn't take long to realise that we had crossed the "border" and were no longer in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium! All the road signs were in French and whenever we spoke to someone (in English of course) they ALWAYS rattled off a reply in French - aaaggghhh ......... obviously we don't understand French or we would have spoken French in the first place!! They don't (or maybe they all just pretend they don't?!) speak and/or understand English and/or Dutch - very weird.

Anyway, Friday evening we rocked out at the camping disco (in the cantine with the local French-only speaking Belgians LOL, and listening to THE worst French disco music....it was a blast!); Saturday was spent not doing much at all except sleeping, BBQ'ing, playing Trivial Pursuit, and chilling out; Sunday was our most active day when we paid a visit to the Caves of Han (amazing limestone formations, stalactites, stalagmites, AND an underground river!!!), and we also visited the nearby village of Rochefort (yep, where the cheese comes from) to see an old castle; and lastly, we drove back on Monday via lovely Maastricht, stopping off for a coffee and a bite to eat.

The highlight was definately our visit to the caves - amazing! After purchasing our tickets we boarded an historic tram for the ride "up" to the mouth of the cave, actually a hole in the side of a hill. These caves are horizontal rather than vertical, and go into the side of a hill rather than deep down into the bowels of the earth ;-) We chose the English/German tour group, rather than the Dutch/French one, so got the spiel (and all the daggy jokes) in both English and deadpan German. Despite the not-so-fabulous guide, the caves themselves were VERY impressive and in a word - huge! The whole time (about 1 hour) we were walking through I felt like something out of Lord of the Rings. I've never seen so many stalagmites, stalactites, and weird rock/crystal formations before. Everything was covered in a fine film of water so the rock actually looked a bit like molten wax, kinda like giant dripping candles! We were led through a system of tunnels and massive open caverns to the underground river, where we boarded a longboat for our short journey back out into the daylight. If you are ever in the neck of the woods, I highly recommend a visit!

See here for a photographic impression of our weekend.

Alli xxx

Finally...a few photos from SummerFest