Mr. Finlandia and I managed to squeeze in a few days of touring during our visit for one of his best mate’s wedding. I was delaying in writing this post as I expected a plethora of awesome words or captions to flood from my fingers onto here….but yeah that didn’t happen so thusly I present a snapshot of sorts to our little adventure in complete random order. Here’s to hoping I don’t bore you mercilessly.

The good:

Our journey as it were started out in Delft,

Home of gorgeous old buildings that for a moment made me feel as if I were back in England and this blue ceramic delftware which I am sure was preposterously overpriced for tourists but kitschy so much so that I actually bought something….for myself. Ladies and jellyspoons this is rare.

In the same square as the fantabulous building for the wedding stood this church:

and sad to say I was feeling adventurous. See that bit just below the spire but still above the black part…yeah you can walk all the way up there. All 376 narrow medieval death stares that the Dutch are so fond of (example of said narrowness in a typical house here)

Thinking that I was in much better shape than I really am we climbed…..and climbed….and climbed….and cursed medieval architects. Once I made it more than halfway I was determined to continue. I’m still not sure if that decision was wise or not. In fact I was so bushed that by the time I got up there I looked like this:

It did provide some amazing views of the town below but….*wheeze*…..don’t attempt unless you are seriously fit as there is really nowhere to stop and take a rest. 



*ooohhhh....ahhhhhh*

Killing more time we took a train to Den Haag (or rather The Haage to the rest of us). It was such a strange mix of modern sky rise cityscapes right next to old houses.



There we witnessed at least one travesty:

LOOK HOW MANY OPTIONS!....and all written only in Dutch….grrrr…..

On the plus side we did get to go here:

And do this:

In Finny we have only but a few fast food joints and sadly when we tour I now look forward to such treats as KFC, Burgerking and *drool* Wendy’s spicy chicken. Sad but true.

We managed to get more cityscape photos from our night trip to Haarlem

and Leiden

and ate some freakin’ delicious caramel waffle-things:

and in-between bouts of trying to not get run over by one of the gazillion cyclists that were EVERYWHERE

we saw this displayed in every form imaginable:

Now without prior knowledge of Dutch Christmas culture one could come to rather the wrong conclusion in a first glance.

 ….am I right?

Toodles Sweets - Ariane