Easter Weekend

I know I say this every time we go on vacation, and it should no longer be a surprise to me, but dear God the amount of crap we require for a weeklong vacation is insane. Seriously…clothes and toys (for both Colin and Shelby) and food/snacks, pillows, 3 computers, and beer, and a coffee pot and….I’ll just stop there because I’m already embarrassed enough. When you travel in Europe you see people check into a hotel with a little, teeny, tiny, wheeled suitcase (if you want to call it that, looks more like a shoebox to me) and that is it. We probably look like a three ring circus rolling up to these people. Anyway…. Once I finally got Shelby out of bed, and we finally got all our crap in the car, and then finally got on the road, it was about two hours later than what I was shooting for.

The drive to Netherlands is fairly uneventful and nothing spectacular to see. Once we got into Holland though you could see some of the differences between Germany and Holland, especially as we got away from the highway more. In Germany there is a lot of green land and pasture but all the people tend to live in the village, with villages dotted all over the countryside. People in Germany don’t typically have very large yards. In Holland there are villages, and people do live in houses that are close together in the village. But, a lot of people also live outside the village and have large yards that are very well kept and beautifully manicured. They have pretty gates at their drive way and large houses and just about every house in the country has some sheep on the property somewhere too. Houses are close together, but not one on top of the other like in the village. They look very expensive, but a lot of people do have houses out there, so either there is a ton of rich folk in Netherlands or the houses aren’t as expensive as they look. The style of houses is also very different looking from German houses. In Holland there are canals and little waterways everywhere, similar to south Florida. The waterways often section of property parcels and peoples’ yards, and they keep your animals in your yard without needing a fence. Speaking of animals, there is an incredible amount of wildlife there. More than I think I’ve ever seen in one place. It doesn’t matter where you drive, just about anywhere you see green grass or water (which is just about everywhere) you will see animals. Swans, geese, ducks, rabbits, sheep, cows, ponies and horses, we even saw a pair of pheasants! Being spring there were baby animals everywhere too. We saw numerous newborn sheep out with their mamas and you could tell their umbilical cords had dried up but not fallen off yet!

After arriving at the campground we got all set up. We didn’t camp, still too cold for that, but we had a little cabin thing, “sunhome” they called it that was perfect size for the three of us and was fully equipped with a mini fridge, a stove and all the dishes and things you need. We didn’t cook though, that defeats the purpose of vacation for us, we love trying new food in the places we visit. After getting all set up and unpacked we had dinner and then dyed some Easter eggs. I had boiled the eggs the night before and brought them along from home. Colin was very excited about the Easter Bunny coming to visit and hiding his eggs. Unfortunately it rained and everything was wet that night so we didn’t hide them. In the morning it was impossible to sneak past Colin sleeping on the living room floor to get outside to hide them so instead I wrote a note from the Easter Bunny and put it in his basket. It said that it was raining when he hopped by and since the eggs were so pretty he didn’t want to put them out in the rain and have the colors run, so he would let Mommy and Daddy help him out and hide the eggs for Colin in the morning. Colin really didn’t care too much the eggs weren’t hidden once he discovered his basket.

Easter Weekend

Easter morning we woke up and Colin went straight for his basket.



The weather forecast during our visit week was not supposed to be the best and when we woke up Sunday it seemed like the rain had already moved through. Since it was only partly cloudy out and not supposed to rain more until that night we decided to change our plans a bit and head to Keukenhof today. I’ve been dying to go to Keukenhof for years, since before we moved to Germany. It is the most famous place in the world to see the tulips. It was amazing, flowers everywhere and it is crazy to think that this incredible garden is only open for 8-10 weeks out of the year! We walked around the garden and took in as much of the sights as we could. Our campground is located in Rijnsburg and Keukenhof is just a short drive away in Lisse, both towns are known for their flower bulb fields and many of the tulips shipped around Europe come from here. The fields are breathtaking, perfect rows of colored flowers are far as the eye can see. I have a hard time picking a favorite season living in Germany, but if I lived here in Holland and got to see this every spring, that would definitely be my favorite season, hands down! After we returned from the gardens we went to the big indoor pool at the campground. There was a large water slide and then a little kid play area too, very nice and Colin approved. We had dinner at the campground restaurant that night before relaxing and resting from our big day.

Keukenhof