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..

Happy easter! i miss this blog already. hihi.. still on holiday now, but i got the chance to connect to internet in my aunt’s house.

Aunt and family picked me up at the Bruxelles-midi-zuid station. I was completely mesmerised by the beauty of Brussels. Brussels, capital of Belgium, is a small and vintage city with the beautiful architecture. The highlights of this country are the Belgian chocolate, Belgian waffle, beer, manneken pis statue, Tin Tin story, atomium. Belgium is a bilingual country, speaking both French and Dutch. The south area, which is closer to France, uses French. On the other hand, the northern people speaks Dutch. However, all the streets marks are written both in French and Dutch. Speaking English is more acceptable here than in France.

1. atomium, was built in 1958 as a monument for an Expo. It represents the structure of iron crystal. i won’t go for the chemistry stuff any further otherwise i will be the most boring blogger. haha. lots of people come to Belgium make their way to this place. we can either go by elevator or staircase to reach each balls. at the top there is restaurant where you can enjoy the view of Brussels from the top, making it looks like miniature. each balls has exhibition. and i love the things exhibited there. such as the development of fridge and vespa, from the very vintage one. ok, i might look like a weird one. haha.

2. Belgian chocolate shops. Belgian chocolate is something that i can never ever resist. i am a sucker to chocolate, isn’t it very clear? hehe. one is never enough. and belgian chocolate really has a thing. loveeeeee it!

3. random building along the centruum.

4. market square. i loveeeeee this place. square in the middle, surrounded by beautiful old buildings. this is (i assume) the heart of Brussels. no wonder, many tourists hanging around. hehehe. too bad it was raining so hard.

5. restaurant area. still in the centruum. i did try spanish cuisine in a spanish restaurant. the dish’s name is paella. nice one.

6. manneken pis. at first i didn’t really know the history about this statue. but it’s very famous and has become the trademark of Brussels (and Belgium, maybe?) as we can see, it’s a statue of a little boy peeing. here is the detail history.

7. manneken pis in belgian chocolate statue.

the weather has been very ugly these past few days. rain on and off. and i am totally convinced that i hate rain during holiday! well, actually i hate rain when i’m doing outdoor activities. i couldn’t really snap a lot of good pictures. but no matter what i still enjoyed the city very much. i wish i could go back again someday. i found it so difficult to answer the question how many days i need to explore a city. maybe it would take at least a week in the same city. one or two days is never enough for me, seriously. but yeah, it was quite an experience.