Thursday, April 29, 2010

Hoorn (Part 1)

Hokay, so because I haven't blogged in quite a while, I have a huge pile-up of photos! And now I don't really feel like going through them all to arrange them in chronological order, so I'm crossing my fingers that my next few posts don't get too confusing and jumbled up.

Last weekend, Schrobbenmaster and I went to visit Moeder Irma and Papa Bert in Hoorn. It's a really nice town just outside Amsterdam, but oh my, I wouldn't wanna live there and work in Amsterdam because without traffic, it could be a 15-minute drive, but in rush hour traffic, it's over an hour! Geez!

(One could argue, of course, that we do live in Rotterdam and work in Amsterdam, which is an hour and 15 minutes on the road. But at least we have a clear highway for most of the route.)

We had the Saturday to ourselves while the parents were at a garage sale, so Schrobbenmaster and I headed into the town centre for some shopping and strolling.

I had to use Schrobbenmaster's grandmother's bike because it was the smallest. Regular Dutch bikes for my size are just too big and difficult for me! I feel like the bike is controlling me instead of the other way round.

At least with this old bike, I could actually touch the ground with my toes, and I felt a little more confident about mounting and dismounting. The only problem was... it's an 'oma fietsen' (grandmother bike) and like any bike, you pedal forward to move, but to brake... you have to pedal backward! Daymn, that sure made me insecure, not being used to something like that. I was so nervous that I'd pedal backward to violently and then fly off the bike! So it really helped that I could reach the ground (even if just with my tippy toes).

In the end, after the bike ride into town, where we went on some really nice paths with trees and stuff, I absolutely fell IN LOVE with this bike. I'd previously insisted on keeping my slightly-too-big bike back in Rotterdam because I'd gone through so much with it (read: fallen off, bruised myself, mounted pedestrian sidewalks and scaring people), but after riding this oma fietsen... sigh... I couldn't go back.


What the heck is going on with this picture??

Anyway, we walked around the town, which is really nice, and then we passed by a fresh fish seller and all of a sudden I felt peckish. No idea why.

We bought some kibbeling - fried fish pieces, more like fish nuggets than fish fingers - and they were really fresh and good. I had them with sweet chilli sauce (because no one here eats proper chilli sauce, bah) and we found a spot by the harbour and sat down to watch the boats.


That's a boat with some tourists making its way out of the harbour.


And then we saw some dude having a real summer holiday on his 'boat'.


He actually fit an outdoor chair onto his small motorboat! How cute is that?!

Anyway, I have to rush off now, bed beckons and (ugh) so does work.

3 comments:

Mumsy said...

love the colours of spring

elleLee said...

haha he looks chinese. was does that tell ya?-we know our comfort.

btw, how did you get your photos to appear so big on your page?

shoobaba said...

not chinese lah... hehe. but in that respect, i spose the dutch are also like the chinese in terms of saving money and finding alternatively creative ways to get something done.

i just insert image and then click on xtra-large.