Tulips and Easter in Holland

Back in April Kyle had six days off, with Easter weekend right in the middle.  You know that we could not pass up that opportunity to travel!  Since Easter was so late this year, it just happened to coincide with the tulips blooming in Holland, so that seemed liked the perfect Easter-ish location.  Even better, Kyle's brother Cory and our sister-in-law Lynn were able to meet us there from London!  Sounds like the making of a great holiday weekend!

Kyle and I decided to make the six hour drive from Stuttgart so that we could bring Gizmo along.  We rented a nice little apartment in The Hague (Den Haag, in Dutch) from airbnb.com.  We arrived in the late afternoon.  After unloading at the apartment, we took the tram downtown to check out Den Haag.  It's a beautiful city that is the seat of the government in the Netherlands, even though Amsterdam is the capital.  The weather was not great, so we only saw a very small part of the city.  We had some Belgian beers at happy hour before ducking out of the rain in a restaurant for dinner.  (It was a Mexican restaurant that looked promising.  They were even playing the right kind of music, but it was a disappointment like most Euro-Mexican restaurants.  Maybe one of these days!)

We were supposed to pick up Cory and Lynn at the train station in Amsterdam late that night, but they were held up by several hours (along with hundreds of other irritated people) because of a problem in the Chunnel.  I think it was Lynn's state of being almost 8 months pregnant that helped them get to the front of the crowd.  They ended up catching the train and staying the night in Brussels before making it to Amsterdam the next morning.

Kyle stayed with the car that was parked extremely illegally (on a sidewalk, in fact) while I met Cory and Lynn at the station.  From there, we headed about 45 minutes north to the quaint town of Alkmaar to see the historic cheese market.  At the market, the cheese carriers, who belong to a guild, carry and weigh the huge wheels of cheese on the old scales.  It was pretty neat, but hard to see because of the large crowds of people.  Since it was Friday of Easter weekend during the peak tulip season, I think it's safe to say that most of Holland was pretty busy.  We made our way through the crowd, bought some different flavors of delicious Gouda, and found a cafe for lunch.  We hadn't seen Cory and Lynn since early January, so it was great to catch up!

After a nice leisurely lunch, the crowds had cleared out and we enjoyed a more relaxed walk through town.  It's a beautiful little town that's worth a visit even when the cheese market is not going on.  It was late in the afternoon when we were leaving Alkmaar, so we decided to just hang out at the apartment that evening so that Cory and Lynn could recover from their night of little sleep after the train fiasco.  The apartment happened to have a Playstation 3, so Cory and Kyle were pretty content playing Grand Theft Auto for a while.  (And by "for a while," I mean every night we were there:-)

The next day was tulip day!  The place to go during tulip season in Holland is the Keukenhof.  It's a large park that is covered by gorgeous displays of flowers.  There must have been hundreds of varieties of tulips along with many other types of flowers.  We all really enjoyed the heavenly smells of the hyacinths.  It was most definitely a feast for the eyes!  We also took a little "whisper boat" ride on the canals through some tulip fields nearby.  It was delightful!

We brought stuff with us to have a picnic/baby shower, so after our visit to the Keukenhof we went searching for a good picnic location.  In our minds I think we pictured sitting and picnic-ing in a field of tulips, but we settled on a nice park instead.  We had a great spread of food, and we "showered" Cory and Lynn with gifts for our niece that we're so excited to meet!

We had gifts for the Mom and Dad, too!

For changing diapers...

After our picnic, we found some tulip fields to frolic in.  It's so beautiful to see the tulips in full bloom growing in perfect stripes of different colors.  The colors were so brilliant with the sun shining on them!  We had a nice little photo shoot in the fields while we were trying to soak in the beauty.  My eyes just couldn't get enough!  (One surprising thing: the soil pretty much looked like sand!)

Since it was a beautiful day, we went to check out Haarlem after our picnic.  It's just west of Amsterdam, and is like a smaller, more quaint version of it.  We strolled around, chilled out by a canal, and headed back to the apartment. We ordered some pizza and spent another evening relaxing.

We spent a sunny Easter Day in the picturesque little town of Delft that was just a 15 minute tram ride away from our apartment.  We spent the day going from cafe to cafe, with some walking, shopping, and boating in between. Delft is known for their porcelain pieces, painted with blue scenes and designs.  Lynn and I both picked out some nice pieces!  We spent an hour on paddle boats, making our way through the quiet canals.  A stop at an Italian place turned into dinner.  It was a wonderful, relaxing day!

The tower is definitely leaning...

Cory and Lynn were heading out the next day, but not until late in the evening.  The weather wasn't wonderful, so we stayed local.  We took a tram downtown in Den Haag and planted ourselves at a nice outdoor cafe with heaters, for pretty much the entire afternoon.  It was great!

Kyle and I left the next morning, but stopped in the gorgeous town of Leiden for breakfast on our way out.  I wish we could've seen more of it!  All of the towns we saw on this trip were so charming!

This trip was a great mix of site seeing and relaxing.  I had always really wanted to see the tulip fields in Holland, and they were even more beautiful than I expected.  We lucked out with the weather for the most part, and had a wonderful time with family.  It's hard to believe that the next time we see Cory and Lynn they'll be a mom and dad!

Slovenia: A Hidden Gem

A few weeks ago, Kyle and I took a great little road trip to Slovenia.  It's a country that's a bit off the radar for most Americans, but we had heard wonderful things about it and decided to spend some time there.  It was about a six hour drive to get to where we were staying on Lake Bled, and it was worth every minute of the drive.  Slovenia is definitely a small treasure of a country!  The people were warm and friendly, it was clean, the roads were great and of course the scenery was amazing!

The good thing about visiting a small country like Slovenia is that you can easily visit most everything within a short one to two hour drive.  We made Lake Bled our home base, and did a couple of day trips from there.  We stayed at a neat historic villa that was just a short walk away from the lake.  We arrived in the afternoon, dropped off our stuff and headed straight to the lake.  

There is an easy four mile walk around the lake that's paved most of the way.  Around every curve is a new gorgeous view, especially of the castle or Bled Island, which has a quaint, little pilgrimage church on it.  (The legend of the island is really interesting.  Check it out here.)  It was really hard to choose pictures since the whole lake is so photogenic!  Kyle got tons of great shots!

These traditional little boats take you out to Bled Island to see the church

What a brave dog we have!

Later that evening we drove up to see the castle.  The price was a bit steep for what you actually got to see of the castle, but we did have some amazing views during the sunset!

The next morning we headed out to see Slovenia's short 43 kilometer (27 mile) long coastline on the Adriatic Sea.  Slovenia's little coast is right between Italy and Croatia, and the Italian (specifically Venetian) influence can definitely be seen in the small coastal towns.  (Further north where we were staying, there was a more Austrian feel, reflecting the influence of Slovenia's neighbor to the north.)  Our first stop of the day was Piran.  It is such a gorgeous little town with a great, relaxed atmosphere.  We took our time, enjoying the beautiful colors of the sea and the small, narrow streets of the old town.  I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't in Italy, but it sure felt like it!

Crystal clear waters!

The perfect spot for dining al fresco!

Our next stop was to see the small port town of Koper.  There actually is a modern, industrial port in Koper, but you would never guess it while wondering around the quiet, old streets!  We had some coffee and gelato while checking out the town.

Last stop of the day was Italia!  (Come on, we couldn't be that close to Italy without dropping by!)  I had heard good things about the city of Trieste right on the coast, so we decided to check it out.  It was a much larger city than I was expecting!  We didn't have an itinerary of things to see, so we just went whichever way looked interesting.  We came across some pretty awesome stuff, including Roman ruins, an expansive piazza, a cathedral dating back to the 6th century and the 15th century Castle San Giusto.  Trieste also has a very interesting World War history.  What incredible layers of the past!

Roman ruins of an amphitheater built by Trajan ~100AD

Castello San Giusto

Busy sketching.  Age doesn't stop her!

I spy a cat!

On our way back to Bled, we stopped to see Predjama Castle, built into a cliff!  It was too late to go inside, but it was pretty awesome.  It's not everyday you get to see a cliff castle!

We didn't get as lucky with the sun on our third day, but luckily the rain held off for us!  We went to see Škofja Loka, Slovenia's best preserved medieval town. It was so beautiful and peaceful. It is off the beaten path, so it wasn't too crowded with tourists. It was a great find!

These walkways to the shops during construction would never happen in America!

From there, we headed to see Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana.  It was pretty chilly, and we were tired of walking so we didn't do the town justice.  It is a beautiful place that deserved more time than we gave it, but sometimes you just have to know when to give in!

The famous Triple bridge, connecting the old and new towns.

Gnocchi for Kyle...some Italian influence.  I had sausage with mustard and polenta...some German/Austrian and Italian influence.

We decided that we couldn't visit Lake Bled without going to see Bled Island, so that's what we did when we got back.  The sun decided to come out a little bit, making the paddle boat ride very enjoyable.  (Especially since we didn't have to do any of the paddling!)

A wedding on the island, how pretty!

Slovenia was formerly part of Yugoslavia.  Josip Broz Tito was President/dictator of Yugoslavia between 1953 and 1980.  He built his vacation home on Lake Bled, where he brought all of the important people that came to visit.  You can see his villa in the picture below.  It's now a hotel.  We went inside to take a look.

Tito's desk

Amazingly delicious Bled creme cake, created for Tito by two of his chefs.

Tito knew how to choose a place with a view!

Kyle and I were so impressed with Slovenia!  It is a hidden gem that is definitely worth travelling to.  (We didn't even get to hike the Julian Alps!  Next time!)  I guess if too many people found out about how nice it is, it might become swarming with tourists...maybe I should just keep this all to myself... :-)