Saturday – the Annual floral parade to Haarlem, from Noordwijk – so if you are in the Netherlands and close to Haarlem or anywhere on the route – check with your hotel concierge – because this a parade that should be missed. The theme this year is “Journey through Europe” This will be the 63rd [...]
Continue reading about Saturday 24th April – the annual flower parade to Haarlem – Bloemencorsodag
Queens Day / Koninginnedag : or is it Orange Crazy Day – for the House of Orange. The shops are full of Orange merchandise right from 1st April – not just for the week prior to the big day. My memory from last year is obviously a bit out of tune. Is that short term [...]
Queens Day / Koninginnedag : or is it Orange Crazy Day? April 30th – Queen’s Day is a national holiday here in the Netherlands. It is a celebration for the birthday of the Queen of the Netherlands (Queen Juliana’s birthday). The date has been retained as Queen Beatrix birthday is in January – not good [...]
Continue reading about Queens Day / Koninginnedag : or is it Orange Crazy Day?
We wandered into Cafe Pitcher on Saturday 27th – to see the 6 nations Rugby battle continue and to grab our table, the one where I could knit as well as watch the screen should I wish to. There were a couple of young men already at the bar. I pulled out my knitting and [...]
Being vertically & linguistically challenged I missed it all when the Olympians came to Haarlem Grote Markt yesterday and to top it off it was freezing freezing cold. So I went home.
what a lovely unexpected touch – the lovely fruity aperitive cocktail with a heart shaped pineapple piece over the rim, and the red rose that all guests received at the Phang-Nga Bay Thai Restaurant. Mind you – why is it unexpected – well in New Zealand that has never happened. Generally someone comes in with [...]
Continue reading about Valentine’s Day at Phang-Nga Bay Thai Restaurant
This is for Tomas, and anyone else who hasn’t actually seen snow falling anywhere. The view is from our lounge window. The odd bicycle going by – everything becoming slowly and surely white. It has been a beautiful, crisp, white white winter, wonderful for us from Auckland, New Zealand. It has not been so wonderful [...]
Continue reading about Snow Days for little people who haven’t yet experienced any
We have had a white Christmas indeed, against all predictions. There had been the heaviest December snows for thirty years (sticking it right up the gravy-trainers and chicken-lickens in Copenhagen), but the snow ceased on 22 December and the snow became hard slippery melting ice over hard slippery cobblestones. Then came the rain. Morgan and [...]
Our family came from Switzerland for Christmas and we were a little worried. Not because our house is small, with one tiny bathroom on the ground floor. Not because we have only one bedroom and they all had to sleep in the lounge on one fold out single bed, one 3 seater couch, and one [...]
We happened upon part of the parade to welcome Sinterklass to Haarlem City and we had no real idea what it was all about. We have since found that Sinterklaas arrives from Spain on a ship and as you can see from compilation of photos on the Youtube clip that in 2009 it was the [...]
