A Visit From the Parents

Erin’s parents left last Saturday to return to Texas after a two-week trip to Europe. The highlights of their trip included all the gourmet food they ate in France, visiting the Loire Valley chateaus, and, of course, seeing us! The low points all revolved around Paris: trying to figure out Charles De Gaulle Airport, which is apparently anything but intuitive, getting on public transport going the correct direction, and maneuvering luggage and person through endless turnstiles in an attempt to reach their train to Blois at Gare d’Austerlitz station.

We spent a total of about 8 days in the Netherlands with Erin’s parents, acquainting them with Dutch culture, history, and landscape. Of course, the beautiful warm, sunny weather of a month ago had disappeared. It was a bit cooler than expected and cloudy almost everyday. The sun finally appeared the last two days they were in Amsterdam. No amount of persuasion could convince either parent to ride a bicycle in Amsterdam, which is probably smart since neither of us would know exactly how to work things out if someone injured him or herself resulting in a visit to the emergency room. Hopefully we can continue our life here ignorant of that particular bit of information.

We did, however, ride bicycles in Park de Hoge Veluwe, a national park about an hour southeast of Amsterdam that we visited in some of our first weeks in the country, so they did get the bicycle experience in a bit calmer, more conducive environment. We’re happy to announce there were no falls and it only rained on us for a few minutes. We also visited the sculpture garden and art museum on the park grounds and drove by the sand dunes that look so out of place in the midst of all the forests and trees. Besides Park de Hoge Veluwe, we took a trip to Delft and toured the factory where the famous delftware is made (resulting in some souvenirs of course), went to the Keukenhof the last day it was open for this year and were still amazed by the rhododendrons and other flowers still blooming, and visited the traditional Dutch village at Zaanse Schans where we saw a demonstration of wooden shoe-making and a working windmill that processes peanut oil (and acquired yet more souvenirs). Other tourist attractions included going to the grocery store, visiting the Van Gogh Museum, walking through Vondel Park, traveling to Alkmaar to attend the cheese market on Friday morning (that was a lot of cheese), and attending a street market in the Centrum on Saturday morning. It was a full and fun visit.

Erin’s parents also partook in almost every traditional Dutch food while they were here: croquettes, meatball sandwiches, tostis, coffee (of course), almond cookies, erwenten (split pea) soup…and more coffee.

Having family in town for so long is a vacation for us as well as for them. John had a whole week off work, Erin took a break from counseling, meetings, and the few other routine activities of her life, and we got to do fun things every single day!