Hi!!
So we've been in Holland six days now. It is a very beautiful, very old, very flat country with lots of windmills and canals! We're staying with Andrew's aunt and uncle and their family and they are taking excellent care of us. Garry, Andrew's uncle, picked us up from Amsterdam and took us to Hellevoetsluis where they live - which is normally an hours drive anyway but we had peak hour traffic as well!!
Eveline, Garry's wife, had a day off on Monday so spent her day taking us to Rosenburg (where Andrew grew up) and Brielle. Brielle is such a beautiful old town - I really liked it!
On Tuesday both Garry and Eveline were working so Andrew and I negotiated the public transport system and made our way to Rotterdam. Rotterdam was very big and busy! Not quite as beautiful as some of the other parts of Holland.
Yesterday Garry had the day off, so he drove us to Delft. Delft was amazing, really really beautiful. I don't know how else to explain it! Every bit as lovely as Brielle but different. We climbed to the top of a tower on a church and had excellent views of the city which was cool. There were also things everywhere about Johannes Vermeer and the painting of The Girl With The Pearl Earring. I was really happy that I'd seen the movie so I had some idea what they were talking about! But it's pretty cool becuse the town centre still looks like it could be from when the movie was set - they've left it all alone and all the new developments are in a different part of town!
Today Garry and Eveline both had the day off so they took us to Middleburgh which was south whereas everywhere else we'd gone was north. Again we just went to a really beautiful and lovely town! There were some great markets that we looked through and lots of shops but there were also some lovely old buildings and churches that we looked at.
It really is lovely here - kinda hard to explain - but everything is just really old and preserved and beautiful! One other thing that I love about here is that they have so many churches around and they all have these beautiful bells! All day you hear these bells playing tunes and you just always have this lovely music around! I love it!
The plan is to go to Belgium for a day on Monday and then go to Germany after that. We're hoping to go through to Prague and Vienna as well after Germany but we haven't booked anything yet so nothing is set in stone!
Hope everyone is happy back in Australia!
Love Ruth and Andrew
xxx
