I’ve said it before, but I’m so happy my best friend is also married to a Dutch guy! This means that from now on she will be headed this way on a fairly regular basis to visit Rafaël’s family. The first being now to celebrate the wedding in the Netherlands with Dutch family and friends.

The party was located in Friesland – the very north of the Netherlands. Koen is from Roosendaal, the south, so this was my first time visiting the province. On the way to the party we stopped in the capital city of Leeuwarden to walk around and have lunch. I think if we ever go back to Friesland, we’ll skip the bigger cities and visit the coast and farmland (which Friesland is known for).

A few days after the party I met up with Christina in Rotterdam for a girls’ day. We started with the day with her husband at Hotel Bazar for a North African/Middle Eastern breakfast before heading off to explore the city on our bikes. Luckily we had beautiful sunny weather! We went first to the Markthal, a large food market with apartments and offices that just opened last year. Then we visited the Laurenskerk across the park. Christina had already been in Rotterdam a couple of days and suggested we head to Vessel 11, a Britsh pub on a boat, for a drink. After some rosé we biked over the Erasmus Bridge to the Wilhelmina Pier for lunch at Hotel New York, the former head office of the Holland America Line. Then we biked back over the bridge and biked through Het Park before having dinner at SET, a ramen restaurant, in Chinatown.