First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I don't think I could have asked for a better Christmas here.
I ended up celebrating with three Christmas dinners. The first was on the 24th with some friends here in Den Haag. Annie, a fellow au pair, was the hostess, and she organized an amazing gourmet dinner. There were about 10 of us, and basically everyone brought their own dinner, and grilled it on griddles she set up in the middle of the table. But she also had chocolates, and bread, and wine for everyone, and she had a homemade Christmas ornament waiting for everyone on their plates. She really went all out!
After dinner we all had some homemade dessert, drank more wine, sang Christmas carols, and got a little silly.
The really neat thing about the people I've met in Den Haag is that most of us are foreigners (au pairs and expats alike), so I get to meet people from all over the world. And they're really welcoming of new people, so there's always a new face. I love the diversity.
Anyway, Christmas Day was spent with Melissa's host family in Rotterdam. It wasn't anything too fancy - just me, Jess, Melissa, and her host family. Just like a regular family dinner because Christmas isn't a big holiday here in the Netherlands (Sinterklaas is the big celebration). Ineke (Melissa's host mom) had presents waiting for us under the tree when we arrived. We each got a Delft Blue Christmas ball... What a great reminder of my Christmas here!
Then on Second Christmas Day (which is what they call Boxing Day here), we did dinner at Ineke's sister's place here in Den Haag. There were appetizers and wine, a pre-dinner game of Twister with the kids, then a multiple course meal with champagne, and delicious dessert.
Seriously, I haven't eaten so good during those three days since I lived at home! Thank you to everyone who had me over... it really made my Christmas a great one!
After dinner at Ineke's sister's, Melissa, Jess and I went out for some drinks. We went to this bar, Vavoom! Tiki Room, which has become one of my favorite places to be in Den Haag. It's this tiny little tiki bar with a lounge type atmosphere in the Grote Markt. It's all done up with tiki (obviously), Hawaiian decor, and leopard prints, and they most often play tunes from the 50s. Plus the bar staff are really nice welcoming. It's really the type of bar you go to and feel like it's summer time, even in the middle of the winter.
Then we went our separate ways, and I met up with some friends at De Paap, another regular stop in Den Haag. I really like this place as well because of a few reasons: they're always open really late (5am, I believe), there's such a diverse crowd of people that hang out there, and they have free live music every weekend. Plus, once the bands are done playing, they throw on dance music, so you get to hear different types of music at the same place in one night. That night there happened to be a Beatles cover band playing, and I must admit, they sounded pretty similar!
New Years was spent in Cologne, Germany with Jess, Melissa, Chelsea, and Jeroen. I somehow managed to book a gorgeous hotel room at a really amazing rate. The room was originally about 750 euros per night, and for whatever reason it was discounted to less than 100 euros per night. I was pretty skeptical, but photos of the hotel looked really beautiful, so I took the chance and booked. And when we got there, we were pleasantly surprised at how nice it ended up being.
The hotel was only three months old, so even though Jeroen convinced me to take a smoking room, it didn't smell at all. Everything looked and smelled brand spanking new. And the room was huge, too! I mean, European hotel rooms are generally pretty teensy, but this was even a good size for North American standards.
So, naturally, everyone came to our hotel room for the pre-midnight festivities. We watched cheesy German TV, a dubbed version of Forrest Gump, drank wine and champagne, then headed down to the center of the city at about 11pm. We didn't really have any set plan in mind, but we knew we wouldn't be at a lack of things to do.
The big thing in Germany is to watch the fireworks at midnight, so everyone gathered near Cologne Cathedral to ring in the new year. There was no count down, but at midnight the church bells started ringing and everyone started lighting off fireworks everywhere. It's the only day of the year you're allowed to light them off anywhere you want (there were firecrackers going off all day, in both Den Haag and Cologne). Since we're used to the countdown tradition, we did our own.
It was a really beautiful way to ring in the new year, what with the fireworks and this huge, gorgeous cathedral looming over us. The bells are so loud that, even though you couldn't hear them that well over the fireworks, you could feel them resonating through the ground.
After that, we headed to a sports bar for some drinks, then called it an early night.
Since almost everything was closed on New Years Day, there wasn't a whole lot for us to do, so we did a little walking tour of the city. We headed down to the center, looked in some souvenir shops, took a peak inside the cathedral (which was actually open, but was just about to start mass when we got there, so we couldn't see the whole thing), walked over the Rhine and then back again, and had some drinks in a couple pubs.
I remember mentioning Sint-Pieterskerk in one of my previous entries - the church I saw in Gent that was the hugest most gorgeous I had ever seen in real life. Well, Cologne Cathedral officially tops that. This cathedral is MASSIVE, and every square inch of it is carved with intricate detail.
The next day (and our last), we headed back to the cathedral, where we walked the 509 steps up to the top of the tower. Not an easy task! But luckily there was a bit of a break near the top where we could check out one of the massive cathedral bells. And then we continued to the top where we got a pretty amazing view of the city.
After that we headed back to Hohenzollern bridge. The day before, when we were crossing the bridge, we noticed a bunch of locks spanning the chain link fence that separates the walkway from the train tracks. Most of them were spaced out, but some were in clusters, and upon closer inspection we discovered that people had these locks engraved (with their names, or a phrase) and locked them to the fence. We thought it was a pretty neat idea, so we bought a huge lock and wrote all of our names on it with the date. We had a pretty tough time getting the lock on the fence, as we bought a huge lock to fit all our names on it. We had to kick it a few times, and then when we finally got the lock through the chain links, we couldn't lock it because we had bent it. But knowing how hard it was to get the lock on in the first place, we knew it wasn't going anywhere. Then we threw the keys to the lock in the Rhine.
(Jeroen and Melissa wrote their names on each side of the lock).
It would be pretty neat to go back to Cologne someday, say in a few years, and find the lock still there.
Our last stop was the Ludwig Museum, a modern art museum. A lot of it was a little too conceptual for me, but there was still some really great art, and I was delighted to find out the museum houses some original Warhol paintings.
And then back in Holland, Amy came to visit! She's a friend from Canada, but living in England, and Melissa, Jess and I gave her a little tour of Delft, Den Haag and Amsterdam. In Delft, we did a tour of the Oude Kerk (which holds the tomb of Vermeer) and Nieuwe Kerk (which holds the tombs of the royal family), checked out some souvenir shops in the square, and had a bite to eat before heading back to Den Haag to have some drinks.
The final day of my vacation was spent in Amsterdam with Amy, Melissa, and Jess. Amy and I went to the Van Gogh museum while Jess and Melissa got the finishing touches on their tattoos. I'm a pretty big fan of Van Gogh, so I'm glad that I was finally able to check out the museum. Apparently a lot of people had the brilliant idea to check out the museum that day as well because it was packed. It took us quite a while to get through the whole museum (about 3 hours, I think), and we only breezed through the 2nd and 3rd floors. But it was really neat to see some original Van Gogh paintings, and learn little tidbits about them too.
After that, we just walked around a bit, checked out some stores, had a bite to eat, and then I headed back to Den Haag.
Unfortunately, Melissa and Jess head back to Canada on Saturday, and I'm quite bummed to see them leave. We all said our proper goodbyes yesterday (and Amy as well, since she went back to England today). It's been a fun 4 months with those girls, and I'll really miss them. Good luck to both of you in Toronto!
Next up: I've just decided to start planning a trip to Paris for February. I have a lot of research to do, as I know almost nothing about the city - I mean, aside from the most obvious: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomph, etc.
Well, that's about it for now, so I'll end it on this. Til next time...
xxx
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