just to summarise about holland. those things in the pictures are what i think holland are famous of. well, there’s one missing: cheese. considering the fact that i despise cheese to death (haha) i didn’t visit any places related to cheese making. just couldn’t stand the smell. so i have no picture of cheese. and a couple of things i’d like to add, hmm, i found out that KFC in holland has the crispy fried chicken!!! (just like in Indonesia) i was so thrilled that i ate a lot of pieces of their fried chicken. haha. ah, so mouth-watering. i rarely ate KFC here in England because i don’t like the original one. i want crispyyyy! and i also found out that Dutch people are very very nice and friendly. they like to greet each other even if they’ve never met or known before. haha.

and my aunt’s family is very warm. they treated me very well and i felt so welcome. aunt cooked home-dishes (hot and spicy Indonesian food) during my stay i was so spoiled. and i love the kids, especially the little one, although we rarely communicated in a proper way. he speaks dutch, a little english and no Indonesian. while i don’t speak Dutch at all, but speak Indonesian and English. now you notice the odds. haha. but we were bestfriends. his name is michael and he likes chicken (kip in Dutch) haha. he wants to have little chicken as his pet. haha. strange obsession. he’s also obsessed with komodo. he asked me once “do you like komodo chicken?” haha. kids.

ok, now i have to go back to work. a very hard one because i have massive deadlines for next month. and exams! and just to motivate me to do my best, i plan a travel destination for next holiday although i’m not sure yet when and where. for the time i have to options, after exams (june) but for only a week because i’m pretty sure my thesis will miss me a huge, or after i finish my thesis (september. amen! please pray for me guys. hehe.) and for the places hmm, ireland? eastern europe? scotland? or other places. i basically can’t choose now where to go because i want to go everywhere. just see where my heart goes to later.

ok, enough rambling. work hard! xxxx

my aunt’s house is in the south of Netherlands, near the border of the Netherlands and Belgium. it is even closer to Antwerp than to Amsterdam. then it’s a good chance to visit Antwerp, one of the big cities in Belgium. left home in the afternoon after little michael finished his class. uncle drove us and the journey took only 30 minutes. the sky was so bright on our way to Antwerp, but turned to a bit cloudy when we reached there. fortunately, there wasn’t raining so we could enjoy strolling around the centruum. but i love Antwerp. so classy and vintage! so so love. there are a lot of food and Belgium souvenir stalls along the way. i came to think nothing beats Belgian waffle. ah, too good to be missed. i didn’t really know the history of Antwerp. all i know is that it plays an important role in the economy and cultural life of the previously known Benelux country (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). its position near the sea has become the key of its role.

i was only for a quick visit there. commuted by train Breda – Amsterdam centraal – Breda. but it wasn’t a direct train so we passed by some cities like rotterdam, delft, den haag. bright shiny dayyy as seen in the pictures above. amsterdam has a beautiful landscape. a lot of canals and rivers as well. so i took a boat trip to explore some parts of the city. and i noticed a tremendous amount of bicycles! (more than the population i reckon. hahaha.) everyone rides their own bicycles. well, the Netherlands is known as a country where bicycles is everywhere all around the country. but, i’ve never seen bicycle as much as here in Amsterdam. everyone rides bicycles (and also those people wearing formal suites). haha. my aunt said that even the prime minister used to go to work by bicycles. well, it doesn’t happen now because of the security issue. this is fabulous. my cousins asked me to join them hanging out in bicycles but too bad i forgot how to deal with the bicycles. hahaha. it’s been 10 years ago i rode bicycles. well, shame on me. the houses arrangement are just pretty. i love to see many different houses style in many different countries. and i took it’s different from England. both are pretty, still. hehe.

anyway, i’ve never enjoyed sun as much as here, back then in Indonesia. sun is something magnificent. hehe..

volendam is a small town in the north of Holland, near the sea. this place is very famous among tourists as a place where they can make a photograph wearing traditional costumes of Holland. i also made myself one. hehe. in the centrum we can find a lot of souvenirs shops and restaurants. i ate fish and chips there, and tasted much better than fish and chips i found here in England. haha. no offence. at least i think there are a lot of Indonesian tourists visit this town. in the windows of the shops, they display many famous Indonesian people posing with the traditional costumes. haha. i felt like home. i hope i looked awesome in the Dutch traditional costumes. haha.

Everybody knows that Holland is very identical to its famous tulip flower. my most favourite type of flower! it grows in spring time.  we can actually find tulip everywhere around Netherlands during spring since local people often grows this flower in their home garden. however, spring this year came a little bit later, so i’m not lucky enough to see the whole country decorated by tulip. the flower itself was long ago taken from the Central Asia (Turkey) to Holland, brought by the Dutch ancient. and it surprisingly grew very well in the Netherlands’ land making it famous ever since. the cold weather is very suitable to grow this flower. usually, the seed is planted during October or November. spring is when the flowers bloomed. it takes a long time, huh?

aunt took me to the keukenhof tulip garden. as i told before, due to the late coming of spring, i wasn’t lucky enough this year to see the tulip grew quite a lot and tall. in the open garden there were only some tulips have grown fast. some were still very tiny and even haven’t started to grow (still in the seed). luckily, in the closed garden (named Wilhelm-Alexandre), i could find various kinds of tulips. maybe they’ve been given some special treatment in this closed garden so the flowers grew quite fast and tall.

and below are my most favourites. the deep red tulips, and black tulips. well, it certainly not really black. but very close to black, a very deep purple. sorry, i don’t think the picture for black tulip i took is good enough. but i just want to put it here. hope it doesn’t let you down. hehe..

black tulip

deep red tulip.

i wish someday on my wedding day, i have these tulips decorated the party. teehee.. kidding. and i love keukenhof garden! the weather was really good in the morning. we left the house at 7 am for the sake of good weather as we had seen the weather forecast earlier (rain in the afternoon). and it’s all worth it. hihi..