After the ' gezellige' and delicious family dinner in Breda, we continued on our tour and visited the Belgian city of Antwerp with Oma (the magnificent Groenplaats and the Onze Lieve Vrouwe cathedral with amazing paintings by Rubens, with lunch in a nice little eetcafe).
After Antwerp, the next day, we drove to the town of Twello (with the fantastically designful 'round house' of Cees and Eef), and pretty Deventer, as well as historic Nijmegen (where I went to university) to visit my friend of old, Karin, and her family (including Suzanna and Michele, Karin and Jan's daughters, who had waited for years to meet them).
Wonderful visits all, but when we returned to Amsterdam you could say our heads were whizzing with all the endless impressions of places and people and we needed a bit of ' peace and quiet'. During the next few days I had a number of meetings with publishers, so couldn't join Da Girlz on everything they did, but two things stand out: a visit to the Van Gogh exhibition in the Amsterdam Hermitage, a dinner at Nick and Esmee's mum Karin's house with Yvonne and Antoine, and a sushi dinner at an Amsterdam restaurant with Denise. As little school work or 'work work' had been done by anyone during our 4-day sojourn down south, during the various mornings and afternoons back in Amsterdam, Tess and Yarrow conscientiously did their school work, preparing for tasks and assessments. They are being extremely pro-active about it all, and are enjoying the school-out-of-school atmosphere of travel schooling.
Saturday morning Niki and I said bye-bye to Tess and Yarrow for a week: we're off to the IATEFL conference in Liverpool (this post coming from there) and Tess and Yarrow will spend three days with my sisters Marielle and Jacqueline and brothers-in-law Arthur and Jos, and their Oma Centa. Anjes will pick them up on Tuesday and spend a day and night with them in Eindhoven, during which time she will have all her sisters and brother together; back on Wednesday, they will spend Thursday and Friday in Amsterdam with Anjes and Lisa and see whether they will be able to see more family there. Cees might come up to take them to the Zoo. If they have time and opportunity they might see a bit more of their cousins and aunts/uncles, but then on Saturday they will take a flight to London where Niki and I will pick them up.
So, check out Tess' facebook over the next week, as Niki and I won't have much time to blog.
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