Back home

We're back from Switzerland, where we had a wonderful time in the snow with the family. I'm pretty tired from the 6-hour drive, so not much to say at the moment, apart from wanting to wish you all a very happy 2009 - may all your dreams come true!!

On the road - part 2

Today we're leaving Holland, but we're not going home yet. We're making a bit of a triangle road trip this vacation and will go to my other SIL and her family in Switzerland to celebrate the New Year.

So it's going to be a long day in the car again (about 10 hours), but it's always great fun with the family in Switzerland. They live in a small village at the end of a road, with two donkeys, lots of chickens (so super fresh eggs!), three cats and two bunnies, and with great views of the snow-capped mountains. My hubby has brought his skis, but even though I'm an avid skier, I'm not going to risk anything, so I'll walk this time...

Dutch skies

Well, our road trip was long but went well and we arrived safely at my parents' place yesterday evening. The stopover in Paris was actually kind of fun, I got to sit in at my hubby's meeting which turned out to be a 2.5 hour crazy creative brainstorming session between some very intelligent people. We also had found a parking space pretty easily. The only bad thing was that the meeting was around lunchtime, but there was nothing to eat or drink, so when we finally got back into the car and could have a sandwich and some water, I had a pretty bad headache which lasted for the rest of the day...

So we're now in Holland for a week. It's always good to be back. Everything is so familiar. The Dutch skies are great (although there are no 'typical' Dutch skies - i.e. lots of big clouds, see 17th and 18th century paintings from the Dutch masters - today, it's clear and sunny). My parents are of course also very happy to see us and want to check out my (still hardly visible) tummy. My grandmothers will come tomorrow, so we can show off some u/s pics again. :-) We'll also try to see some friends again this week, always a bit of an 'issue' when we go back to Holland: you try to see as many friends and family members as possible, which then means you're just running and driving around like crazy to do this in the few days you have available and you are completely exhausted when you're back home. And if you don't do it, some people feel 'left out' because you didn't visit them while you were in the country... The best solution is actually to tell everyone to go to a certain place at a certain date and time, so you'll see everyone at once. But that's not always possible (or we forget to organize it beforehand, which is more often the case).

On the road

Today we're driving to my parents in Holland for Christmas, 9-10 hours on the road. Normally I quite like road trips, but we've done this stretch already so many times that I'm not really looking forward to it, although today we'll have a change of scenery because we have to go via Paris instead of Luxembourg. 'Have to' because hubby told me he has a meeting with an architect... As he'd been traveling like crazy for the past couple of weeks, he didn't want to go there on Saturday (2 hours by high-speed train) and come back the same day, but prefers to 'conveniently' combine it with our trip up north.

He had mentioned this possibility a week ago already, but was then still leaning towards going there and back on Saturday. Then this week he said his boss would go, so I was relieved. But of course the boss is a smart-ass and doesn't want to work the weekend before Christmas, so now hubby has to go. In a way he even likes it, because the architect specifically asked for him (and he thought his boss would be unhappy about that), so he's kind of flattered...

From here to Paris is 4 to 5 hours by car. The meeting will probably start around noon, so that means we have to leave around 7 am (if we would have taken our regular route, we could have left around 10 am and still be at my parents' place in time for dinner), hopefully find a secure place to park our fully loaded car somewhere in central Paris (when I mentioned that to hubby he was like 'oh, no problem, it's Sunday'. Yes, but it's the Sunday before Christmas which means all the shops will be open - normally not the case in France - and it'll be very busy!), hope the meeting doesn't last longer than two hours (and what am I going to do in the meantime? I know, I shouldn't say this, many of you might trade in a lot for two hours in Paris) so we can get going again, don't get stuck too long on the 'péripherique' to get out of the city and hopefully still arrive on time in Holland for dinner (another 5 to 6 hours).

Pfff, I'm exhausted already (and I probably have to catch up on IComLeavWe tomorrow)!