Ernst, Apeldoorn and Sylvaine

Sundays, the 3rd of May, I met up with Ronald (a German guy living and working in Dublin) in the afternoon in Amsterdam. We met in Kakadu National Park close to Darwin, Australia and have kept in contact since. He was meeting his parents in Amsterdam and had the afternoon to himself, so time to have coffee and a beer and catch up. Monday and Tuesday I was free as well, but no plans there, just chill out, relax, clean a bit etc. Then just 3 days of work and time for weekend as well. This time towards Friesland to see my parents and see Ernst van der Pasch with my brother. Great performer and performance, a perfect way to spend a Saturday evening. One of the few performers with a story and message, not just an evening consisting of a string of random jokes and anekdotes. I've seen him before, but this time I was really impressed. For all you Dutchies: go see him! The next morning I visited Thea, André and Jorick to celibrate Jorick's first birthday.

Ofcourse there was a week of work again, followed by a facial on Saturday which was nice and relaxing. Nog much happened until Thursday the 21st, Ascencion day: 4 days of fun with Marieke in Apeldoorn! We booked online at hotel Abbekerk, the best choice ever! Such lovely people, great service, good room, brilliant shower... what more can a girl want: brownies at breakfast..... sigh.... grin..... wider grin.....We started with a quick visit to Paleis 't Loo where there was a very very very long line to get tickets. So we just did a quick tour of the places you didn't need a ticket for, got coffee and cake and ofcourse stood still at the place where 8 people were killed a few weeks ago: In the evening we went out for dinner to an Italian restaurant after watching a few rockbands and their groupies during the free Aperock festival. The next morning we started a very important part of the holiday experience: shopping. Lots of things were bought, which resulted in the need for a new backpack. Ofcourse we had to experience the other things Apeldoorn has to offer, so of to the Apenheul for an afternoon full of all sorts of apes: and the occasional weird picture . It was turning into a busy day since we had dinner at Don Quichot at 8 (officially a 3 course dinner, but we made it 2) and a concert of Ian Parker in de Gigant at 9. Another brilliant evening, we both hadn't heard of him before, but it turned out to be an amazing night. We bought 3 CD's, need I say more.... Check him out folks. Saturday we got up early and headed to Hoenderloo, to visit the National Park 'De hoge Veluwe' (Marieke in front of a little lake inside the park) to cycle around and visit the Kroller-Muller Museum. The last one was more a compulsory thing (we both are not into modern art and especially modern sculptures), so we only stayed about half an hour, checking out the must see items (there are also paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso and work of Rodin). We cycled on the free white bikes from 11 till 3 after which it was time to head back towards Apeldoorn. Our last dinner was in a little random pub in Apeldoorn centre, nothing special. Sunday it was time to head home again after a nice coffee.
The first 2 days of the week were spent in Hilversum, where we had our last seminar for our PMD course. This weekend Sylvaine came over from Paris to visit me. Lovely to see her again after such a long time (we met in New Zealand). We headed into Haarlem on Saturday, walked around, did some shopping, had coffee, looked at hofjes and monuments and chilled out. We watched from Dusk till Dawn in the evening. What a stupid movie, I really do not understand why that is an alltime classic....
Sunday was spend on the bike exploring the dunes and beach near Haarlem/Zandvoort and Bloemendaal. We both got sunburned but had a brilliant time! O and funny how foreigners look at our bikes: The pictures are a courtesy of Sylvaine! In the evening we chilled and watched Kingdom of Heaven. I just brought Sylvaine back to the train station and will chill out for the rest of the day. Only 29 days till I leave to go down under!!!