The Shwits

Keukenhof & Koningsdag

We are just rockin’ and rollin’ on our Netherlands bucket list this year!

A few weeks ago, we finally made it to the renowned Keukenhof gardens! We were lucky to have some family visiting the Netherlands, so we met up in Amsterdam and headed about 30 min south to Lisse, where the gardens are located.

Good side – it was the first warm weekend of the year!

Bad side – it was the first warm weekend of the year.

While we did get to wear short sleeves, most of the tulips weren’t in bloom yet because the weather here has been quite cold this spring. It was only a few weeks ago that the canals froze over, so we were kind of anticipating this.

We were able to see some ‘early bloomers’. We learned on this trip that there are early, middle and late blooming tulips. The Keukenhof keeps their gardens blooming through the entire season by strategically planting the bulbs, like the example below. In this way, about the time the early bloomers are dying, the middle ones are blooming, and so on.

Although the fields were mostly green, the greenhouse in the center of the park was in full bloom! There were literally hundreds of types of tulips in here. I had no idea so many existed.

Next up, something just as colorful…

Koningsdag 2018!

And this year was particularly special because the King came to Groningen! I was BEYOND excited. In case you didn’t know, we don’t have kings and queens in America (something about a Revolutionary War? *joke*). So when I heard there was a chance to see King Willem Alexander and the royal family up close and personal I knew we were going. PLUS – I love a good parade.

Quick recap – Koningsdag, or King’s Day, celebrates the birthday of the King. I would say it’s the Dutch version of the 4th of July: everyone is super patriotic and there is a lot of beer consumed.

Also fun fact – King’s day is celebrated on April 27th, which is indeed the King’s birthday, but this was not always the case. His mother, (former) Queen Beatrix was born on January 31st, but that’s a terrible day to have an outdoor party in Holland. To remedy this, she kept the birthday of her mother, (former) Queen Juliana who was born on April 30th. So, considering the eldest daughter of King Willem was born in December, it will be interesting to see if she adopts the birthday of her father.

Maybe you don’t at all find that interesting. I’ll move on to pictures now.

Bright and early Koningsdag morning Shane and I headed to the parade route to get a good spot! Thanks to Shane, we ended up with a spot on the fence. And, I would say it worked out well for us.

Unfortunately, we were ONE person off from shaking hands with him. Just my luck. We were able to shake hands with all the princesses though, so pretty much that means the future queen and I are besties now.

Princess Ariane.
Queen Maxima in red.

The rest of the day was reserved for the Vrijemarkt (aka – free market, one giant yard sale) and free music in the city center.

Keukenhof Gardens – CHECK!

(basically) Meet the King – CHECK!

Let’s see what else we can do this year…

Tot ziens,

Whitney

Livigno, Italy

Ahhh, nothing better than alpine wind blowing through your braided pigtails as you whizz down snow-covered mountains with a board strapped to your feet.

Especially so, considering we almost didn’t make it on this trip. I’ll explain.

We had plans to fly on Saturday around noon. The last few trips we’ve cut it pretty close at the airport for various reasons – delayed trains, delayed baggage check-in etc.. This time, we were going to be smart. We booked ourselves a hotel at the airport Friday night and planned to have a “leisurely morning before the flight”. Boy, were we wrong.

Friday night, in the hustle and bustle of getting all the snowboard luggage off the train, Shane left his backpack in the upper storage compartment. What was in the backpack? Oh, let’s see. Only everything important: his work computer, the GoPro, a Nikon camera, his snowboarding goggles, his keys, his new hat, and the kicker – his passport.

Now, I must say. We’ve learned a few lessons from this experience.

NEVER put all your expensive stuff in one bag. I mean, rookie mistake. We have traveled enough to know better.

Take a picture of your passport NOW. Don’t make a paper copy. I mean, do that too if you want, but find a way to store it on-the-line. If your paper copy happens to be with your lost passport and you can’t find the number then you’ll run into this scenario – like us.

Save ALL your receipts for any purchases over, say $50, in a dedicated place. You’ll need them if you submit claims for insurance, and when you go to look for a computer purchase that happened in 2010 the odds are you don’t have the email anymore and the store where you purchased it won’t have records beyond 2012 *cough-Best Buy-cough*.

As soon as we realized the backpack was missing, Shane filed a report with NS, the train company. They told us that we had a chance because the train we were on terminated for the night in Den Haag, which was only two stops away. On the other hand, the train terminated in Den Haag, only two stops away, so when we realized the backpack was gone the conductor had already taken the train to the yard for the night.

Ok Ok, so we lost the stuff. Expensive, yes, but replaceable. And Shane is a compulsive backer-upper so all his thesis data was locked up at work – also ok. Next problem: the passport. Generally speaking, you can’t fly to another country without a passport. Lucky for us, we found out that the airline KLM would allow Shane to fly with only his Dutch drivers’ license as ID. So, I kept the original flight and Shane rebooked with KLM to Milan.

Fun fact. Milan has TWO airports. Our original flights went to LIN. The rebooked flight went to MXP.

Ok ok ok – soooo no problem. We rented a car to drive to the mountain. New plan – I’ll pick up the car, drive to Shane (who arrived after me), pick him up and we will be on our way.

That’s a big fat NOPE!

I booked the car but listed Shane as the primary driver because he usually is. Turns out, for reasons that are still beyond me, when one makes a car reservation you can’t change the primary driver to someone else without canceling the booking and starting over (despite having all the booking information and the same credit card). Since we definitely didn’t want to do that – we still needed the car – Shane had to land and come to me.

So, 4 hours and an expensive cab ride later, my knight in shining armor arrived and picked up the car with no problems whatsoever (insert eye roll – to the car people, not Shane).

BUT HOT DAMN WE WERE FINALLY ON THE WAY!!

And no, this picture is not from our journey there. By the time we arrived in Livigno, it was ~10:30pm (instead of ~6pm as intended) after a dark and winding way into the mountains where, despite Shane’s excellent driving, I did very little talking and pressed my invisible-passenger-side-break a lot.

But it was all worth it. SO worth it!

I think I’ll stop talking now and let the pictures speak for themselves. Since we lost the GoPro, no real action shots this trip, but we did agree – it was kind of nice to be disconnected in that way. As fun as it is to have the GoPro, you’re always thinking about if you’re getting good videos for pictures or for the compilation video. This time, we just snowboarded, drank, and snowboarded again. And we were very lucky with the weather, only one white-out day (which we used to play in the *beginner* funpark – I made 4 JUMPS IN A ROW!) and the rest was snow overnight, sunshine during the day.

Ok, now I’ll really stop talking.

I swear we were having a good time. (lol)

One really nice thing about Livigno, if you could get to it then it was open for business. As in, the off-piste (off-trail) options were just about equal to the piste options. This was my first time trying off-piste, and now I get it. It’s like snowboarding on a cloud!

Despite, as Shane likes to put it, “his best efforts” we came. We snowboarded. We conquered.

Now we have to wait another year to do it all again… sigh.

And don’t worry. Shane figured out a way to report the lost passport without the number and goes next week to apply for a new one. Turns out, it requires exactly the right combination of information (current address, permanent address, phone number etc.) to allow the online system to find you. Quite a challenge if you’ve moved a lot.

Oh, and FYI, don’t try calling – they will only direct you to the website. Good work, America.

Tot ziens,

Whitney

The Siberian Bear

IT HAPPENED!

The canals (and ponds) froze!

We’ve heard rumor of this, but it hasn’t been cold enough for long enough to make it a reality. I don’t think the canals in Amsterdam have been frozen enough to skate/walk on since 2012, so I imagine it’s safe to say that for Groningen as well. But, thanks to the “Siberian Bear” (as the Dutch are calling it) it’s been cold (and I mean COLD) enough to cause a deep freeze and pull out the skates!

One of the largest canals in the city, the Verbindingskanaal.

The cold weather has been fun for freezing things over, but not so fun to commute in when your commute includes a 20 min. walk (or bike ride in Shane’s case). In weather like this we always think of our friend, Alicia (yes… Alicia – you lol). When she was visiting over the summer a few years ago she made the comment “Biking here isn’t so bad.” Peak summer. Beautiful weather. When the wind chill is -18°C (-1°F) and blowing so hard that you’re simultaneously sweating profusely and turning into a popsicle; it’s those moments that we look at each other through squinty eyes, head turned to the side so you can actually hear each other, and say “Yeah Alicia! Biking here is NOT THAT BAD!”

It’s OK, Alicia – we get a good laugh out of it. (Love ya!)

This was definitely a lifetime first for us – walking on natural ice. We both compared it to walking on those glass floors at tourist destinations, except you know the glass floor isn’t going to break. No guarantees for the ice I suppose.

Shane was a little more nervous that I was. “Did you hear that crack?!”

Canal Walking Zernike – 03Mar18

Alas, as of today the bear has officially moved on. We are back to normal, up to 6°C (43F°). It was fun while it lasted, it’s just too bad it didn’t last long enough to make the Elfstedentocht possible.

Tot ziens,

Whitney

Groningen Round-Up 3 (Plus Some Extra)

So, remember that time we went home for Christmas?

…probably not, because I never actually blogged about it! (facepalm)

In short:

We flew home – we had Christmas with our families – we celebrated New Year’s Eve – I turned 32 (not too keen on seeing that in writing) – we saw as many friends as we could – Shane got to see some of his nephew’s swim meets – time went way too fast – we came back to the Netherlands!

I’ll let the pictures show the details. Presented in chronological order.

Shane with his nieces, Layla and Hudson
Shane, Alex & Brad
Dad’s new kitten, Abby
Christmas Day

Shane was a mattress shopping assistant.

curious kitten. Muffin wouldn't let me get any pictures this trip. — Curious kitten, Abby.

Sis had to work, so we went to her!
New Year’s Eve

Friend reunions!

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been laying low. Shane is officially in the final stretch of Ph.D. so there is a lot of writing going on in our house at the moment. There have been a few new developments though.

1. We booked our next trip! We will be heading to Livigno, Italy for a week of snowboarding in March.

2. We checked something off our Groningen bucket list! We FINALLY made it to an FC Groningen match. The best part? The tickets were free (thanks to our insurance ‘healthy points’ rewards program) and we ended up being 4 rows from the field! The match ended in a tie, but it was so nice to go to a live sporting event.

3. I started a Dutch course! For two hours every Tuesday and Thursday night, I’ll be in class. The group is 16 people, and the people are from all over. Mexico, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Poland, Bosnia and America (me), to be exact. I think it’s so cool for such a diverse group of people to be united over a common goal of learning Dutch. Supposedly, when I complete the course I’ll be halfway to ‘B2’ level, which would be advanced-intermediate. I should be able to have conversations and more clearly express opinions in Dutch without problems. I’ll report back on how it goes.

4. We are fully on the climbing train. Right now, we’ve been going to the climbing gym about twice a week. Our gym does mostly top-rope climbing and has a very small (indoor) bouldering room. We recently found out about a fairly new bouldering gym here in Groningen, so we decided to check it out. Lots of fun!

5. And most importantly, Meatball got a house for Christmas (had to get the XL version…). Toooooo cute!

So, I think that’s about all! More to come after snowboarding. 🙂

Tot ziens,

Whitney

The Best Darn Mom & Sis Trip: Video Version

Hi all!

Considering we took this trip in September, these videos have been a long time coming. They’ve been ready for a little while now, but I was waiting until after my trip home to the U.S. before I posted about them here. I wanted to share them with my mom and sister first! 🙂

This was also my first attempt at making the GoPro video mash-up. Usually, Shane is the video maker, but since he “didn’t go on the trip and can’t tell my story” (yeah yeah – I guess he’s right) I did it, and ended up loving it.

So, here they are!

Part 1: the Netherlands and London

Part 2: Scotland

(I would also like to pre-warn you – all the music is from the Outlander series which, of course, was part of the reason we went to Scotland.)

Hope you enjoy!

Tot ziens,

Whitney

Berlin, Germany

Good morning!

I’m writing this post from home in Charlotte, NC!

(at 6:45 am – thanks time-change)

I’ll keep it short and sweet.

About two weeks ago Shane and I continued our German Christmas market tradition; this year in Berlin, Germany! I had full intentions of writing this post before we headed home for the holidays, but such is life around this time of year – too many plans and not enough time.

Amazingly enough, this is our 4th year of Christmas market trips! We’ve realized that each year we’ve gone a little bit bigger.

Year One – Day Trip to Münster

Year Two – Overnight in Valkenburg (The Netherlands) and a day trip to Düsseldorf.

Year Three – One night in Cologne

Year Four – TWO nights in Berlin

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it every year. If you ever get the opportunity to go to a German Christmas market then do it! They are so magical and full of Christmas spirit (I imagine the gluhwein also helps with that). Berlin was no exception – great shopping, great food, great company!

This year we were able to meet some Groningen friends (from Shane’s department), Theresa and Giulia, who are now living in Germany after finishing their PhDs.

I mean come on. Who doesn’t want some hot cheesy balls?

And Shane found his dream come true – a marzipan POTATO!

(aka – a potato sized ball of marzipan lightly rolled in cinnamon)

We were also able to fit in some Berlin sightseeing despite the abundance of Christmas cheer on Friday night. Saturday morning we participated in our favorite ‘new city’ activity – a walking tour! We were a little worried a 3.5h tour would be too long, but it wasn’t enough time! Our (funny enough, British) guide did an excellent job at taking us to all the major sites.

img_5804-1 — We saw the Brandenburg Gate in both stone and chocolate form!

The Berlin Cathedral, and the TV tower in the background.

A piece of what’s left of the Berlin wall.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

They had the coolest pedestrian walk symbol. People love him so much he has a store!

All in all I would say Berlin was a success! Of course, two nights is nowhere near enough time. So, until next time, Berlin!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Tot ziens,

Whitney

Groningen Round-Up 2

Hi blog readers!

We head to Berlin in about two weeks for the Christmas markets, but I thought it might be nice to do a little round-up of what has been going on here.

First off, it’s my FAVORITE time of year again!

All the lights are back in city center! One positive thing about my new commute to work is that I walk home from the train station in the afternoon. Right now, the sun sets about 4:30pm. I’m back in Groningen about 5pm, so the walk home is super gezellig!

And speaking of festive things, Sinterklaas has officially arrived in Groningen!

Tradition (aka: me) dictates that we must go stand in the rain and watch a boat parade. Holland did not let us down this year. It definitely rained, but luckily enough most of it passed by the time Shane, Danielle and I were waiting for good ole Sint.

Shane and I have also started a new hobby – indoor climbing!

We have a nice indoor climbing gym here in Groningen with a pretty renowned 37m (121ft) outdoor tower called Excalibur. We have not (and will not for a while) braved Excalibur, but we did take the beginner climbing course with some friends. It was great and now we’re hooked!

And this was just in time for Shane’s 32nd birthday!

Extra lucky for him, our friend has recently started a cake business!

(If you happen to read this and you live in the Groningen area – if you need a speciality cake check out Sarah at Thema Taart Groningen!)

And lastly, we’ve checked something off our Groningen bucket list. We finally made it to the Groninger Museum.

Confession.

We may or may not have ended up there due to a poor translation on my part.

I pass the museum every day when I walk home from the train station, and in the windows they advertised for an exhibit called “Rijks in Groningen”. Now, in Amsterdam, the main art and antiquities museum is called the Rijksmuseum. I thought ‘Cool! Some things from the Rijksmuseum are temporarily in Groningen!’. What I forgot was that the word ‘rijk’ translates to ‘rich’. The exhibit advertisement I walked past for weeks was not borrowed items from the Rijksmuseum, but about the ‘rich’ of the province of Groningen.

Whoops.

Regardless, the exhibit turned out to be nice, and I saw this chicken on the beach.

So yeah, that’s about it! Oh, and Meatball says hi.

More to come after Berlin!

Tot ziens,

Whitney

Summer Send-off (in Belgium !)

I’m not gonna lie. I had a fantastic summer.

No work. Lots of travel. Still got paid (thank you bankruptcy settlement).

Mid-September I started a new job and you’ll be happy to know that I have been paying the price for my idyllic summer.

Nice to meet you up-at-6-am-with-a-45-min-one-way-commute.

Long story short, I’m still re-adjusting to working life and my other half has that whole ‘I need to finish my PhD’ thing going which means there was little motivation left for the blog – despite the fact that we had a fantastic trip with our friends through The Netherlands & Belgium!

Side note: the new job is going well. I’ve been there for a month now. And yes, I must learn Dutch for real this time! I’ve started with a tutor – so hopefully there will be more speaking soon. Right now I do a lot of listening…

Ben & Jen’s visit concluded our summer of visitors. Our first few days were spent in Leiden and Amsterdam where Holland greeted our guests with ~~beautiful weather~~ nothing but rain. We stayed in a lovely Airbnb in Leiden city center which had the cutest garden we were never able to use.

At one point it hadn’t been raining for a while, there was blue sky, nice temperature, so we thought “Hey! Let’s sit in the garden!”. We were outside for literally a minute before it started raining again – blue sky and all.

We did eventually get a break in the rain and were able to wander around Leiden.

We also spent a little bit of time in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, Jen picked up a stomach bug on the way to Europe, so she had to sit this one out.

While showing Ben around, Shane and I were able to get in some ‘Amsterdam firsts’ too.

We went to a local brewery that we’ve been eyeballing for a while, Brouwerij ‘t IJ. Good beer + cool location (in a windmill) makes it a pretty popular hangout.

We also made it to the Foodhallen, which is an indoor food and drink market located in a converted train depot. We all really enjoyed the Foodhallen because it has anything you could ever want – food and alcohol alike.

Bitterballen variety plate. Not pictured – the ‘Monkey Balls’ (aka: bacon wrapped meatballs) – which were gone before I remembered to take a picture.

After a few days in The Netherlands, we rented a car and headed to Gent, Belgium with one slight detour on the way. A little backstory, when Shane and I visited London we walked across the upper portion of the Tower Bridge which has the glass floor. Up there was a small exhibit of famous bridges around the world. One of these bridges was the ‘Moses Bridge’ located in the south of The Netherlands. It’s called the Moses Bridge because the bridge itself cuts through the mote around Fort De Roovere. When you cross the bridge, you’re walking through the water – get the name reference now?

Anyway, I needed to see it, but it is in a location that isn’t necessarily easy for us to access from Groningen and particularly so without a car. Luckily for me, it was essentially on our route to Gent, so we stopped!

And boy was I disappointed.

IT WAS FLOODED.

(insert reaction inappropriate for a blog post)

I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.

Next stop – Gent, Belgium!

Note to anyone visiting Gent. If you see the sign below don’t drive any further or all the grandmas walking in the streets will glare at you while shaking their fingers.

Turns out, Shane was driving in a pedestrian only zone. In his defense, this was the only sign and generally the road color changes when you enter a pedestrian zone. Not so in this case. Oops.

Once the car was safely parked, we headed off on foot to see Gent like everyone else we passed in the pedestrian zone earlier.

Waffles were a necessity, naturally.

Belgium day 2 took us by train from Gent to Brussels for the day. I was particularly excited for Brussels because we scheduled a beer and chocolate tour which was 5 hours of awesome! If you find yourself in Brussels I can’t recommend this tour – The Brussels Journey – enough!

It’s advertised as a two part tour: part 1 – chocolate, part 2 – beer. I honestly expected that during the chocolate portion of our journey that we would have one, maybe two pieces of chocolate per place.

NO MA’AM! (or sir)

In each of the 4 chocolate shops we tried 4-5 pieces each, and our guide – who I unfortunately can’t remember her name because she was FANTASTIC – knew. her. chocolate!

You know what else our guide knew about? Beer.

Living in Holland, we have tons of Belgium style beers. Dubbel – Tripel – Quadrupel. After three years did I have any idea what that actually meant? Nope. But I do now! And, in keeping with chocolate portion of our tour, the beer part did not skimp on the tastings.

Additionally, this tour was also part walking tour. As we made our way around the city we were able to see some of the major sites – like the the Grote Markt and Manneken Pis.

Manneken Pis is surprisingly small and has so many outfits! Over 200 to be exact – enough to dedicate an entire museum to them. As you can see from the pictures below, when we passed by Manneken Pis during the morning he was wearing one outfit.

HE CHANGED CLOTHES by the time we went back with the tour in the afternoon.

Magic I tell ya.