Staying and meeting family in Holland

Overall we have been absolutely spoiled with all of the people we have stayed with. It has been incredible to see parts of Holland and now Switzerland that we would never see or experience without the incredible patience and tour-leadership of the extraordinary people we have been staying with. First and last we stayed with Karen's cousin Co and his hilarious and kind wife Joke. They picked us up and took us back to the airport and treated us to incredible coffee and great company for many of our nights. Co also organized a great family get together on our last night in Holland at an amazing Pizzeria. After our first day we went out into the country to stay with Co's brother Hugo. At Hugo's we met his daughters and their children. Hugo is also a teacher and was very generous to share his house with us and show us around. Anyone else out there been to the largest and oldest Labrynth in Europe? Well thanks to Hugo we have. Finally as mentioned below we stayed with Gretta and Gerard who treated us to a boat ride, a bike ride and card tricks.

Each family generously treated us like royalty by selflessly opening their homes, schedules and fridges for us all. We are so very grateful.

Stopping in Rijswijk

We continued to have an amazing time in Holland over the next few days. We spent some more days with Gretta and Gerard -Jan (I hope I haven't butchered that spelling too badly). We spent time riding bikes to Gouda a little town about 3km away. It's been a long time since I had ridden a bike, so it was a little shaky at first. I am not the only one with a few bruises to remind me how long it had been since I rode a bike. It was so flat and the air was crisp and fresh. There are so many canals in Holland we almost always rode, or in other parts walked near or next to water. We went into town and had our first Heineken and then rode back as the sun was setting. While staying with this family we were treated to delicious meals every morning and night, played a great game of Farmer's Bridge (Karen won even though she claimed to 'never have played before'), and shared delightful conversation while looking over the lake that was their backyard. It was spectacular and unforgettable.

We spend the next day in a University town called Leiden. This was an incredibly sweet town with interesting stores and bushels of happy people. We walked along the canals as we did many days and we met Gretta and her daughter for dinner. I also bought Mom some Birkenstocks as they were suuuper cheap. Overall it was a really lovely day.

Dad and Son on the dock!

Another view from the dock

On the lake... Oh what a life...

We are staying with another cousin of Karen's and they live on a lake!
Their house is absolutely amazing, directly in the water.
We went for a nice long boat ride yesterday (can you see I have
another little sunburn?) and for a 12km bike ride into town. A sweet
little town and we has our first Dutch Heinekein. Today we are on our
way into Rotterdam to a great museum and to see more water and the
Docks.

Loving the relaxed Dutch lifestyle!

Enjoying the sights of Holland

We are here in Holland and for the past 2 days have been spending time in Ruurlo staying with Karen's cousin. Here are some pictures from the first few days we have been here. I will keep adding more as we go on.

Picture attempt #2

Welcome to Holland

For this next adventure, we find ourselves in Holland. We are lucky enough to be staying with family of Ben's the entire time we are here. They picked us up from the airport and welcomed us to their home facing a canal. I have attempted to attach a picture so you can see the view from the sitting room. Today we are headed off to another cousin of Karen's to be in the Dutch Countryside.

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Karen and Scott Arrive Safely!

So Karen and Scott (Ben's parents) have arrived safe and sound in England. We went out to London to see them on Friday night. As we arrived across the street from their hotel we could see them waving frantically from their hotel steps. Ben and I prayed that Karen wouldn't cross the four lanes of traffic to give us a hug and would wait at the cross walk until we could make it over to greet them. Thankfully we were all hugging happily seconds later. We went up to their hotel room, and checked into our own. They were kind enough to get Ben and I a room so we could spend all evening with them and because we had to sign the papers for our apartment early Saturday morning it meant we had time to have breakfast and visit before heading North.

We had a great dinner at the Troubador Restaurant somewhere in South London. It's actually right next to the restaurant that Connor works at. (Connor was working at his other job that night). It's a quirky little place with a window full of assorted kettles and strange and wonderful signs everywhere. Joni Mitchell played there at one time in her career and ever since then it has been the coolest place to be. Well, I'm not sure that's true, but the hummus is amazing and that's enough to bring me back.

Saturday morning we had a great breakfast and then Ben and I went off to sign our money and our lives away. We left Karen and Scott to shuffle their luggage for their trip to Scotland this week. As we were walking away from the bank, we almost walked into Rufus Wainwright. For those of you who don't know him, he is an incredibly talented Canadian Musician who we have loved and respected greatly since High School. There he was just sauntering down the street looking hip. If that isn't an omen for moving to a great neighbourhood, I don't know what is. Ben also saw David Byrne from The Talking Heads (a band he likes.. I didn't see, I was on the phone) which was a pretty good second omen for him. We then took the train into Rochester with Scott and Karen for our Rochester day. It was on and off rain, so that wasn't great. And the Cooper's Arms (our favorite pub in the world) was closed due to power failure, which was disappointing. However, they did see lots of the antique shops along the high street. We met up with Kate for a beer and had some late Legends for lunch. We finished off the day at Thai Four Two (where else) witha delectable and perfect meal. That place never disapoints and we were happy that Karen and Scott enjoyed it as much as we do.

They are off to Scotland for three days and then Aleida arrives Wednesday afternoon (yay!) and then Friday afternoon we are off to Holland!

Our New Neighbourhood

If you want our address please give us a little comment on here and I will e-mail it to you. And then you can Google Earth Street View our apartment. We are right behind the big red bus in the Street View image :)

Moving to London

Well, the time has come that we can announce on the blog. We are moving to London. Many reasons have resulted in our choice to move to London. One main one being that living in the Medway isn't quite providing us with the adventure we had hoped. We will be sad to leave some amazing new friends at work- but know that we will keep in touch with those who want to keep in touch with us. Personally I am a little bit sad about leaving some of the students behind. Many of them of course will cheer when they find out we are not returning, but there are always a small few who worked hard and made the worst days just a little bit okay.

So, we are moving to North London- to an area called Stoke Newington. It is a really hip and up and coming part of town, that feels much more like home and we have only visited a couple of times. The apartment we have secured is in the old Council Housing buildings in the area, however they are now mostly all privately owned. There are families EVERYWHERE and parks and playgrounds. A 11 minute bus ride away from the Tube on the Victoria line, which takes us right into the centre of London within minutes (also approximately 16 minutes to get to Victoria Station to buy my day of Wicked and Billy Elliot tickets EVERY DAY). It's a two bedroom that has a water closet (meaning the toilet is in an actual closet, and the bathtub and sink are separate), it's all furnished and it even has a sweet little patio out front. Ben can't wait to find a little camping bar-b-q and when it's nice out make some burgers on the deck. Right now they are repainting and cleaning the whole place, so when Connor moves us in on the 15th (while we are in Zurich) it will be all fresh and new.

While preparing to move and change our lives has not been easy, we are hoping it will be for the best. We want to look back on this year being a big exciting time for us. And we are doing what we can to make that happen.

Some final tidbits from Barcelona~

In some of the final picture from Barcelona below you will see:

- Here we are trying to get the fountain in the picture with us. Ben's arms aren't quite long enough, but you get the idea!
- Photo shoot! Jumping in the arch.
- Day 5 'beard' of Ben's. We didn't check any luggage and therefore didn't bring any razors.
- Outside the contemporary art gallery. Ben went in when I went to the aquarium. He said it was great!
- Eating some breakfast in the market. So much yummy fresh fruit and bread and cheese and candy.

La Rrrrrrrambla!!! A fun street in Barcelona!!

Oh yes, we drank that whooole pitcher of Sangria.


Don't remember much after that.














This was this amazing bar called Cafe L'Opera. Everyone in Spain seems to love their jobs especially here where they talk and visit and smoke and drink with all their customers.






Sunshine! Water! Blinking!













What's that smile? A girl who didn't know she'd been tourist trapped and didn't know that beer would be 6 euro. Oh yeah. At least it didn't happen too often.





This picture was taken because it was so sunny and beautiful and we had to capture the warm sun on our faces.

Gaudi Apartment Building

This is an apartment building that Gaudi also designed.

Here Ben is speculating what Gaudi's inspiration was for this part of the roof sculpture.




















On the rooftop of Gaudi's building.

Sagrada Familia

Here is Ben next to the famous Gaudi who designed all of the amazing architecture in Barcelona.


There is so much intricate detail. It has been worked on since the earler 1900's and it's approximate finish date is 2030.





Here is the front. The top four pillars are amazing and there is a huge middle piece that hasn't been built yet but will change the whole skyscape of the building.
The inside. Amazing, it's still all under construction so you can see all of the people working on the building.

The Barcelona Zoo!!!

Ben and his new best friend.

One can't figure the other out....









The deers with the Dears on their anniversary!! :)












They let you get scarily close to the animals. I could have easily reached over and put my hand in the gate and pet this cute little animal.

Ben said no though.







Look at the cute goats!! They chewed on everything. It was cute.

Some Spanish Celebrations!

Can you see these puppets? We learned later that some of them date back to the 1800's and are restored and used during these festivals.

They varied between about 20-30 feet tall and people would hold them on their shoulders and dance with them.


It was truly amazing.




Here you can see me standing next to a couple of them that aren't even the tallest ones!!!














Hopefully you can see here these human towers! They are truly amazing. We saw the men wrapping themselves in these huge black clothes. We were trying to guess what was happening when we saw them being wrapped up. Someone overheard us talking and explained that people would be making human towers.



They would crawl up each other and when they made the towers and then the towers supported by about 30 men and women would walk through the square.

Gothic Quarter for Valentine's Day

here we are in one of the oldest remaining parts of Barcelona.

I am hugging the A in Barcelona.


Also you see the Cathedral and some yummy bakery cakes on Valentine's Day!

Barcelona

Well, we had a wonderful time in Barcelona. We saw the sights, lived the life, drank lots of the beer! I will post some of our favorite pictures from the trip on here.








These are some pictures from the hostel we stayed in. It was a great little hostel. Very very clean and quiet, just what we needed. There was a sweet little room that we had all to ourselves and were next to a little common room.

The staff was really friendly and helpful and gosh, did I mention how clean it was!

Awesome.

Hola from Barcelona!!

Weeks without updates again... I am a terrible blogger. However, we are in Spain and loving it! (despite the rain, but my father said if he was in Spain he wouldn´t be complaining and my mother said that it also sounded like my diamond shoes were too tight, so I won´t say anymore about the weather)

It´s hard not speaking the language, but as Ben pointed out that at least it´s a latin language so we can guess what some words say because they are somewhat close to french. Everyone so far in Spain is really really friendly!! We have not come across anyone rude or annoyed when we don´t speak Spanish. In paris people would sort of scoff at you when you spoke English, but here they all seem to want to try their english out and most are pretty good!

The sights have been great. We have seen lots of amazing architecture by this man called Gaudi. He is very famous here so we spent the day seeing the cathedral that is currently in it´s 120th year of being built or something crazy like that. We also saw an apartment building he finished in the 20´s. It´s some amazingly spooky and interesting stuff for sure. Tomorrow we are going to a market that apparently fills the whole street. Lots of food and handmade stuff from Spain, I think it will be the sort of thing we have been waiting to see. Yesterday we went to the Zoo (it was so awesome, we saw Gorillas!!) and to a Flea Market.

The Hostel we are in is truly amazing. For our first Hostel Experience, we are feeling very fortunate. It is very quiet and relaxed and CLEAN. We have our own little room and share the bathrooms and showers with everyone else, but they must clean them a few times a day because it is immaculate. We are in a really nice posh area too it seems. about 3 blocks up from us is an incredibly fancy shopping area (gucci, louis vuitton) so it doesn´t quite feel much different then London at times. When we ventured to the Old Gothic Quarter though, that definitely felt really unique and Spanish. I have taken many pictures but we did not bring the camera, so I will post some up here when we get home on Saturday.

Love to all at home, wish I had something Spanish to finish this note off with. However all I know how to say is Hola and Hermano (means Brother- thanks Arrested Development)