Day trip Geithoorn

@ The Steenwijk train station

@ Geithoorn

@ Geithoorn Village 

The Boat ride....

Day trip to Geithoorn to good but I felt it's a little over rated. 

The best cheesecake in town @ Cheesecake Company

Lemon Cheesecake and Double Chocolate dip cheesecake......yummmmm

Last week I happen to visit this really awesome cheesecake shop with my food and partner in crime (for cooking and eating) fren 'CD'. It's called the 'Cheesecake Company', located very close to where we live, a small yet lovely shop near the centrum.  I had a tough time deciding which one to order but finally decided to have the Lemon cheesecake, my fren CD had double dip cheesecake and both the cheesecake were really yum. For the record let me put it that I've never had such yummy cheesecake ever  before and the best part is it's not expensive, it costs about Euro 4 a slice and the slices are quite huge. If you are visiting The Hague and love cheesecake this is a must visit and must eat place.....oh I am going there tomorrow to have some more cheesecake....happiness plan tomm. 

Address:

CheesecakeCompany

Torenstraat 32-2513 BS

Den Haag

www.cheesecakecompany.nl 

Winter update- Frozen lake and canals

Experiencing sub-zero temperature for almost 2 weeks is  not a pleasant experience but to see snow fall in real for the first time in my life, frozen canals and lakes and to walk on it is definitely and truly an amazing experience. I had an eventful day today, it started with a visit to Floraholland this morning...or rather very,very early morning, located at Aalsmeer it's world's largest flower auction cooperative with a turnover of 4 bn Euro. We went there to see how the flower auction happens and understand the value chain as part of one of my optional course with the LDS dept.

We had to leave really early to be able to see the auction and we were on time at  the Hague central station but damn 2 trains to Schipol were cancelled and we had to wait for almost an hour in the freezing temp. which was really annoying....Dutch winter ahhhhh m so not liking it.The route to Floraholland was via Schipol and this morning once we were out of the Schipol airport to take the bus, all of us almost froze, it was much colder than Hague and we were literally  foot tapping while waiting for the bus, it was so cold that I hated the LDS class for keeping the study visit during such miserable weather and at 7 am it was super duper cold. The visit was interesting and I did enjoyed touring it again as I had been there with my ARD class too.

On our way back from Alasmeer, I saw the famous canals of Amsterdam completely frozen and it was a site to watch, all the jetty's and boat were lying  still and the very busy & bustling canals  were not busy at all. I took some pictures and we rushed back to Hague. Once we reached Hague we decided to walk instead of taking the bus and the Lake next to Binnenhof was on our way, which is completely frozen we decided to walk inside the lake and take pics. It was really cold but inside the lake it felt even more colder....so many people were skating and I only wished to have known how to skate. We took some pics but as the temperature further dipped we came out of the lake.  My first winter in The Netherlands has been quite fun...I saw snow, frozen canals, lakes and the snow making the city beautiful first and than ugly  as it refuses to melt and turns into slug, mud and dirt.

The Frozen canals @ Amsterdam

The frozen lake next to Binnenhof @ The Hague

People skating and enjoying in the frozen lake...

Some more snow and "Snow Fight"

After the snow....

One of my fav. view of the canal which is frozen today...

CT and CD snow fighting...lol

CT and Me snow fighting...

View of Peace Palace (ICC) from Dorus 5th Floor 

The street next to Dorus

Season's first real Snow...

Finally managed to capture seasons first snowfall

View from my room

It's snowing finally and yes I've to admit its beautiful. Thanx to the weather forecast we knew it's going to snow but had no idea that this time they meant real snow and not snow dust like last week. Everything outside is covered in white and it looks beautiful...more pics. will follow.

Christmas @ Haarlem

I've never enjoyed Christmas as much as I enjoyed today....early morning we went to one of our frens place at Haarlem and attended the mass at the Cathedral in Haarlem with them. It was interesting as I was attending a Christmas mass for the first time in my life. Merry Christmas to me and to you...

Flowers or veggies???

2nd bunch of tulips

After buying the 1st bunch of tulips few days back I ended up buying another one yesterday...as I've been trying to live in a students budget (which is not easy for me) buying flowers over veggies does effect my budget so  I've been trying to convince myself NOT to buy cut flowers every week. But..... the Tulips are really pretty, lasts for about a week, really brightens my room and fits in my budget perfectly (just 2 euros)....there I go...trapped in the flower vs veggies debate...at the end flowers wins and I am planning to buy all the possible colors of tulip while I am here in Netherlands.  Once I am back home in India next year  I know I will never buy tulips coz it will be unaffordable and also it'll not be available at the local florist...last time I bought  deep orange color and this time I bought the lovey red...next time maybe I'll buy the Pink tulips. 

Is it real???? A Tulip story

Tulips on my table

Yesterday I finally bought Tulips from the flower shop next to Albert Heijn XL and  also bought a beautiful vase....as cooking is my first priority I think its more practical to buy veggies than flower, it's not that I've not been buying flowers but I've been buying only the potted plants and not the trimmed flowers but yesterday I just decided to buy flowers over "veggies"....and come on m in the Netherlands how can I not buy Tulips...maybe this is the only place in Europe where I can get 9 Tulips for 2 Euro or even cheaper sometimes (3 bunch for 5 Euro). It looks beautiful on my table and I think it really  brightens my room. 

Later in the evening my fren CD had come over for dinner and her first reaction after seeing the tulips were "Oh....it's beautiful but is it real????" and I said "You don't trust me with flowers right??? The reason why CD said that  m sure is because of the very real looking fake orchid I've in my room which  I got from Bangkok and have kept it in a pot to make it look even more real....it might sound funny but its looks more real than the real ones they sell here. And again this afternoon my fren KR came and she said the same thing "is it real??". We all had a good laugh over my tulips...

Going Dutch....the bike story n the joke of the week

I bought a bike (cycle) few weeks back, a good old pink bike from Ms. G, the Colombian lady from the senior batch, my fren CT wanted to buy it but it was high for her so I ended  up with the bike and she was sweet enough to give me an extra lock.....just so that my bike doesn't become a victim of the "Dutch National Pass time"...which unfortunately happens to be stealing bikes (recently one bike belonging to one of my batchmate from Philippines was the first victim of the "Dutch National Pass Time" in our batch). 

My frens CT and SS also bought bikes and both the bikes are really cute....we were just to lazy to ride the bikes since we bought it but  today we decided to ride  till Centrum & The Grote Market as we had some work, it was fun to ride bike after such a long time but we are still getting used to riding (walking) on the right...sometimes we tend to ride on the left...(yeah...yeah old habits die hard ) back home we walk n ride on the left lekin yahan toh opposite hai eekdam. The best thing abt Netherlands is, the whole country rides bike and has bike path all over....which I don't think any other country has....I've seen it in Paris but not too sure if whole of France has it. My fren CT and I've decided to enjoy the extended sunny weekends by riding our bikes n exploring the neighborhood....which will not be tiring but we will enjoy it, otherwise the amount of walking I've been doing since the time I came here is really not funny.

Oh I forgot the joke of the week :

Me: Yaar CT, yahan toh puri country bike chalati hai aur har jagah bike path hai.

CT: Yeah...lekin hamare wahan sirf countryside mei log bike chalate hai.....hahaha

We must have laughed for 10 mins after this :). 

Trip Madurodam

I had not heard about 'Madurodam' untill someone told us about it the last week, we were told that it's an  interesting place to be and we sure will enjoy the visit....as suggested we found the place quite amazing, the miniature version of famous monuments  and places in Netherlands were really cute, it was like seeing the whole of Netherlands in one area....only it were hundreds of times smaller. To reach there we took Tram no 9, from Holland Spoor Station, the stop is called 'Madurodam' . We really enjoyed our visit and also we happen to be there on the right day, as1st october was a bright, sunny n lovely day, infact it was the hottest 1st october ever recorded in many, many years.  I will recommend it to everybody visiting Den Haag to visit 'Maduradam' atleast once. 

Mini replicate of various places in Netherlands

St. John's Basilica

One of the cities in Netherlands

Leiden University

The Peace Palace- International Court of Justice

How can this post be complete without the famous windmills of Netherlands!!!!