Belgian Waffles in a Medieval City

Instead of unpacking all our boxes of clothes, we decided to escape the mess in our apartment and headed off to Ghent in Belgium last weekend. During the medieval times, this was the largest city in Europe outside Paris. It was a lovely weekend getaway, a city filled with historical buildings, amazing architecture, canals, cobbled pathways, Belgian waffles, pancakes, and of course, Belgian chocolates! And there is a medieval castle in the centre of the city (for those of you from Melbourne, it sure beats Kryal Castle!!) So we sightsaw (is that a word?) and ate our way through this lovely city. Thank you to our friends who gave us the wedding voucher for this weekend trip, you know who you are!

Home Sweet Home

We finally have a home over here, it's an apartment in the charming city of Den Bosch. Our shipment from Australia arrived last week and we're slowly unpacking all the boxes and furnishing the apartment. Here comes the sales pitch...there is a guest room awaiting our friends and family, and hopefully these photos of the view from our lounge room of the many cafes downstairs, will entice you to make the trip to visit us!!

Queens Day

Ok, we're a little bit behind, Queens Day was on 30 April.

It is a huge event in the Netherlands. It's a public holiday over here (if it doesn't fall on the weekend) and everyone goes a bit bananas. They wear orange everything, orange wigs, orange t-shirts, orange feather boas, the bakeries put out their finest orange icing cakes on their window displays, and people fly the Dutch flag from their house or apartment windows. Also, it is the only day where illeagal trading is allowed over here and everyone empties out their attics and the streets turn into a massive flea market. Restaurants have live bands or DJs and city squares are turned into a big dancefloor with international DJ lineups.

We spent Queens Day in Eindhoven, but hopefully next year, we'll be celebrating it in Amsterdam.

We took a few photos. There's a shot of a DJ suspended in the air by a crane. Pretty wild. And the street festivities.

For those hungry backpackers....

My passion for value for money, all things edible and in the past, all you can eat establishments, were probably the motivation behind Paul asking me to stand in front of this eatery window in Amsterdam. During my younger years, I would have been tempted by such an offering, but now older and wiser, I know better, and having looked at the food on display, it confirmed my suspicions....all fried, gluten filled balls of nothing, limp noodles with no vegies or meat, and sweet and sour dishes that are more red colouring and fried onions, than anything else.

Lazy Sunday in Amsterdam

A week ago we went to Amsterdam for a lazy Sunday. Had a delish lunch at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant and strolled the streets of Amsterdam. It was our first time in Amsterdam since we moved over here, and even though we spent half a day walking around, we covered just a tiny pocket of the city. Still loads more to explore over the coming months and years.