20060423 Holland

Het hallo

Gwyn and I are back from our Easter trip to Holland which was totally awesome. We managed to see all the sites on our hit list and really got to enjoy some of the Dutch culture. But before I get into that I need to tell you about my adventure to the health spa (www.Champneys.com). The team I work with at Unilever went on an away-day last Wednesday to get pampered, and I had a Swedish Massage! Anyway we arrived at the resort to be greeted by some weird people dressed in white robes, odd, but it got worse. We were shown to our rooms and then told to change into our own robe in preparation for the treatment, so just imagine Lawrence climbing into a white bathrobe, 2 sizes too small with his little white slippers and then taken down to the beauty parlour to get a massage, sweet! I was quite nervous about the massage, expecting some sexy Swedish chick to rub herself all over me, but it did not work out quite as expected… A short little Korean sumo wrestler, who could pull down a lion in her sleep awaited me and sent me through the roof when she insisted on massaging the bottom of my feet, a rather painful experience, so guys, leave the Swedish massage for the woman to enjoy. The stay at the health spa had rather interesting meals, tiny portions of nuts, celery sticks, etc were served. Alcohol, fats, red meat and salt where banned and you had to go to the restaurant in a robe…. Anyway enough of that, back to our trip to Amsterdam.

We arrived in Schiphol at 23h30 on Thursday night, caught a train into Amsterdam and walked through the centre of the city to our hotel in the middle of the night, feeling totally safe, quite a change from the SA life style. The next day we took a tour to a small coastal town called Volendam, on the way we stopped of at a monster windmill which we went into to see how the thing works, quite amazing. This was followed by a clog factory and an irresistible cheese farm. From Volendam we took a boat trip across to Marken. Interesting thing is that Marken used to be an island and now, due to land reclamation, looks like a peninsular. The most striking thing I picked up on the trip are how water logged and flat the country is and the number of bicycles. In Amsterdam we got to see most of the sights with the highlights being a canal cruise around the city, seeing all the romantic bridges (I preferred the canals in Amsterdam to those in Venice which are very cramped). The red light district was quite an eye opener - actually seeing the prostitutes selling themselves so openly and then people making use of the service! Hectic Stuff. We spent a lot of time in restaurants sampling the local food, excellent I might add, and drinking good old beer. Then on the Saturday we caught a train up to Castricum, a little sea-side town where Isabel (my moms school friend) & Wijnand live. They were wonderful, pulling out all the stops to make our stay pleasurable. We took a couple bike rides across the dunes landscape to the sea together, the sea is about 30min away by bike and for Gwyn and I quite a novelty to be back on a bike again, my rear end however was not that eager and had to get used to the saddle. Wijnand is quite a winey and pulled out some fabulous wines for us to taste, Isabel is a master chef who showed us what proper Dutch cooking is all about. Thank you for everything guys! From Castricum we went to Keukenhof (the world famous flower show) for the day and marvelled at the most amazing flower, tulips so big that I could not get my hands around them in every colour under the sun, fields of daffodils, perfectly manicured gardens, along with all the usual Dutch food. But all things need to come to an end and before we knew it we were back in London….

Gwyn’s mom is visiting us this weekend and we are now going to the Flora (a Unilever Product) London marathon….

Keep well and all our love

Lol & Gwyn