Bethany’s school has huge hallways…and the teachers change rooms not the students…and her library is gigantic! Zoe and I caught a bus to her school on Tuesday to join her for lunch. The school lunch is amazingly gourmet; there are 3 choices and they are all fancy. No fries, no burgers, no fake pizza’s, real food with actual vegetables. Anyway, I got menu A – a spinach filet with asparagus risotto and peas and carrots. Yumm; I even ate Bethany’s (or Aunt Beppy as Zoe calls her). After lunch we sat in two kindergarten classes that were having library time. The little kids loved Zoe. She got to help pass out their reading folders, and two girls in particular walked her around and read to her for most of the class. The students at the school all seem older for their classes. I think it’s because they start kindergarten at 3..and have three years of it. Kind of early. Anyway, it was fun.
Afterward we walked along one of the gorgeous local trails to the other end of town to visit the IKEA. I love IKEA and Zoe fell asleep in the stroller so it was enjoyable. I bought her a small set of pots for her kitchen, and we got ice cream from a little machine that auto-fills your cone. It was delicious and messy. We then walked across the street to the train and road it back to Bethany’s.
Wednesday I woke early to go get our rental car with Stefan…he came along in case I needed some German assistance. I got a tiny little Smart Car that was a convertable and covered in advertisements for the rental agency. It was hysterical. Zoe loved riding in the front seat and getting to actually see out the windows. It was a fun car to drive. On the freeways in heavy fast traffic it felt a little sketch as it just doesn’t pickup and go fast quickly; so I just stayed in the slow lane until things thinned out.
Our destination was Keukenhof, Holland. It’s a huge bulb garden in the middle of all the famous bulb fields. Apparently it’s very popular with old people and British ladies because it was completely overrun with them. The drive ended up taking about 3 hours since there was a TON of traffic to simply get into the garden’s parking area….must be the ‘olds’…maybe not quite worth that drive.
The gardens were in full bloom, though, and quite beautiful. Tulips galore plus a windmill and some wooden clogs to sit in. we spent about 4 hours wandering around taking pictures. Zoe especially enjoyed the litle petting zoo that featured goats, a nice little cow, chickens, bunnies, pigs, lambs, and a baby llama! I intended to rent a bike for exploring the local bulb fields but
Zoe was about to fall asleep and I realized we were only 20km from the sea so we hopped in the car and drove west. I had no map and the GPS didn’t have any of the roads so I just aimed for the sun (it was 4:30). We saw (well I saw since Zoe fell asleep) some amazing bulb fields and cute little towns. We also found the beach! Zoe enjoys playing in sand and was able to dig out a few fun little shells. The drive home was uneventful except for the GPS running out of battery. No worries I was able to navigate from a tiny McDonalds map of all their restaurants in Holland. Good times.
Today we are flying home. We’ll go catch a train to the airport here in about an hour. We are again flying on Emirates, so we get to go through Dubai with a shorter layover in the middle of the night. We’ll arrive home tomorrow night and then hop a bus back to Songtan. We’ve had such a great trip, but I am very excited to see Bryan…and Arlo.
