About last weekend...

Last weekend, we visited our family in The Netherlands for the first time in almost 6 months. My sister in law had a baby at the end of May and we haven’t even seen him yet! Babies grow so fast and I was afraid that if we would wait until the situation will be back to normal, he would probably be walking already by the time we would be able to get there.

We took the risk, got in the car and drove to see him (and the rest of the family of course) There are usually too many cars on the German highway but it was different this time. There were no traffic jams or ‘stop and go’ traffic and it only took us 5.5 hours to get to The Netherlands (normally it would be around 7 hours)!

My father in law will become 80 years old in January and my mother in law 72 in September, and therefore it took us ages to decide if we should go or not. We discussed it with them and they were happy for us to come but we had to keep the distance, wear a mask and clean everything we touched. We are not paranoid but they are in the risk group and we didn’t want them to get sick because of us. It was so hard not to hug them when we saw them!

Even though this weekend wasn’t as relaxed as usually we still enjoyed it a lot. We spent a lot of time with our niece and baby nephew, and we also managed to see some friends. The weather was great and we thought we would go to the beach on Saturday but we decided to stay with the family as we don’t know when we will be able to see them next time. We went to see my brother in law, played with kids (without touching), went for a long walk and had dinner together.

We had a lot of fun with our 3 year old niece. She goes to the kindergarten and as she could be a risk for us and her grandparents, she couldn’t touch us. She had difficulties with it at the beginning but then she got used to it. At the end she was allowed to hug my leg and she did it with so much excitement that I almost felt over 🙂

They live in a green area, close to den Bosch. It’s a perfect place for walks with kids as there are small lakes, paths in parks and several playgrounds. It was a very hot day and I was not that excited to go for a walk at first but I also didn’t want to break the fun, so joined the group at the end. I took my backpack with a bottle of water and snacks for everyone and we were ready to go.

Let me show you around!

I was hoping for more shadow as I know that there are large parks in the area however the path, we took was a little bit far away from them and we were exposed to the sun more than I would like. We could see the trees all the time, but we had almost no shadow.

The summer is still in its full power and we could see many flowers, insects and butterflies. I like that the grass looks so fresh even in August.

First, I thought that this was some kind of dried grass but when I looked closer, I saw that these were tiny red flowers (and spider web)

One of many small lakes in the area. You can also swim in some of them but I wouldn’t do it as the water doesn’t look very clean.

I have never seen this plant before. It looks like some kind of berries but I’m almost certain that it’s not edible.

They are not at their best but I still like them. Look at that purple!

We walked in a circle and on our way back we passed by a few houses. There were some zucchini/courgettes in front of one of them and the small sign said: Help yourself please. I took 3 of them and left a note so that they know how much I appreciate this gesture. I would do the same if I had a garden as it’s so nice. Sharing is caring and we’re going to have zucchini for dinner tonight!

Here are some more impressions from our walk. I would love to show you my nephew as well but his parents don’t like to have photos of their children on the internet and I respect that.

Thank you for joining me today!

Cheers!
Martina