Back to previous page
Next stop: Eindhoven
After a one night stop at Pen and Andrew's place, we went to City airport for our flight to Eindhoven. With fog on both sides of the Channel, our flight was delayed by an hour and a half, but Piet and Emma were happy to
play at the airport. Finally in Eindhoven, the kids quickly warmed to
oma Bep. For the next three and a half weeks, we would use Eindhoven as our base. We would receive some visitors here, for example
Robert, Irene, Bas and Sascha and we returned here after our trips to Zwolle/Amsterdam (5 nights) and Eerbeek (3 nights). Otherwise, we kept family visiting to a minimum with only visits to omoe Sytske and Jan Anne's
new apartment. This way, the kids had plenty of time to acclimatise on the Willem de Bruynstraat.
Willem de Bruynstraat
And acclimatise they did. Oma read books
to Piet and more books to
to Emma. A few times a week, oma would take the kids to the city farm in the nearby village of Nuenen (where Van Gogh painted his first major work). The city farm is situated in a forest and has, in addition to the usual animals, a nice indoor area for a coffee break and some slides and
swings, which are
enjoyed on each visit. Piet
baked some cookies
with oma. Emma built a
Lego Duplo tower and Piet watched
saint Nicholas's arrival in the Netherlands with oma. This program was a bit too scary for Piet: there was a bag containing a mini Black Peter. But afterwards, Piet and Emma would put their
shoes in front of the fireplace and eagerly
unwrap the little presents in the morning. The
playdough was enjoyed
by both. Oma would make
puzzles with Piet or read
more books.
Zwolle and Amsterdam
Our first trip from Eindhoven was to stay with Jan's sisters in Zwolle and Amsterdam. The weekend we stayed in Zwolle, as all cousins need to go to school during the week. We had
dinner, played the
Wii, read books
(while others played the Wii), had our toetje (
dessert, so popular with the kids that it is one of the few words Emma attempts to say. The others are mo for more, pappa, mamma and oma), and played a
board game (we discovered Piet really likes this).
Cousins Elisabeth and Tiem in Amsterdam are not yet of mandatory school age, so we visited them on weekdays. The nights we spent at Jan's cousin next door, while spending the days at Elisabeth and Tiem's house. The children got on amazingly well, even enjoying watching the construction workers across the street, playing in the little square nearby, being read a book by aunt Sarah and watching the pre-dinner DVD together. Twice we went to a larger playground. This was mum's first bike ride in Amsterdam, so she left the kids to aunt Annigje's cargo bike.
Holiday park in Eerbeek
For the last weekend of our stay in the Netherlands, we had rented two cottages in a Landal holiday park in Eerbeek for a stay with oma Bep and Jan's sisters' families. The park came with an indoor swimming pool, but as the children need such close supervision, the parents appreciated the indoor playarea much more. It had a
large slide, a balls box, large climbing frames and a
bouncy castle. There was more bouncing
outside and even inside the cottages
the beds were great bouncing fun. On quieter moments, the kids might
climb on the sofa to watch the world outside go by, or have
Thirza or
oma read them a book.
On Saturday evening, we had an
early dinner and oma commemorated that it was the 100
On Sunday, we celebrated aunt Hanna's birthday and did some face painting - Tiem got scared by his cat mother. On Monday morning, Piet enjoyed playing skipping rope with Tiem and Elisabeth, Emma got Tiem's devoted attention and after breakfast, we packed up to drive home. It had been the first time all oma's grandchildren had been old enough to play together, which was a wonderful experience.
Snow in Zurich
On Friday 25th November we took an early train to Schiphol airport. After some delays due to snow in Zurich, we arrived at Henriette and Marco's place. They used to live in London and their children are just 3 and 8 weeks younger than Piet and Emma.
Due to the snow, the little walk to the nearby park was already interesting, though nothing beats a swing. The next day we went sledding in another park nearby. It was good fun - apart from the accidental collision - and we even got to feed the ducks and get a family picture. On Sunday, we visited the Hahn family, who had an amazing collection of trains and a brilliant slide cum climbing wall cum bunk bed, which kept the kids busy the rest of the day. On Monday, we decided to skip the zoo and instead do more snowplay. In between these activities, Piet, Emma, Laura and Luca played inside the apartment with the doll strollers, jumped on the inflatable mattress, read some books, ate pancakes with Nutella and watched the nighttime Youtube video.
Sleeping?
The next day we took to 8am taxi to the airport. Due to immigration checks, getting the Singapore-Melbourne boarding pass took more than half an hour - forget internet check-in. Once on the half empty super jumbo, the kids had a great time without much sleep. They managed to get through the stop-over in Singapore, just, and finally got some sleep on the last leg: Emma even slept from take-off till landing. We arrived home at 10pm the next day and were delighted with our own toys. Piet and Emma slept from 1am to 4am that night and would wake considerably earlier the next few nights, so it took a week to get back into our old routine. However, we look back on a marvelous trip. Emma kept developing at her own pace, learning a few more words and improving her non-verbal communication, but Piet made a big step forward in his Dutch. He is talking a lot more Dutch to both his dad and Emma and he even learned to sing some saint Nicholas songs. He seems less shy than before and went without fuzz to the next group in the nursery.
