08.03.05

Holidays: Hills and Holland

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:21 pm by GaZ

Sorry for the lack of updates… the past couple of weeks have been spent “on holiday” (although we never went very far).

So first of all Hesam came over to England. I picked him up from Gatwick and we then drove up to Bakewell, a little village in the peak district that’s the home of the (aptly named) Bakewell Tart! The reason for this detour to the north was because my parents rented a beautiful cottage in Bakewell, and so my parents, brother, grandmother, uncle (Bill… Tom decided to stay in Wales to take care of Tequila), Hesam and I all went up to stay there. Unfortunately, Hanne had to go back to work on Monday so she could only stay for a couple of days, however I took a couple of days off work so that Hesam and I could stay until the Tuesday. And so the following days were spent cavorting around the hills and visiting neighbouring villages, such as Eyam (the village at which the great plague of 1666 was apparently first recorded). In the evenings we visited the various pubs around Bakewell, sampling the local ales as well as lots of Hoegarden, getting beaten at darts by dad and Bill, and playing a fair few games of poker. All the photos I took in Bakewell can be found in the gallery.

On Tuesday Bill gave us a lift back to the NEC, where we could catch a train back to Birmingham New Street. And so started the Birmingham chapter. Unfortunately since Hanne and I had to go to work for the next few days we didn’t manage to do too much. Hesam can give you his side of the story when he gets around to writing about it. We did go out to a nice tapas bar on Hanne’s birthday, but that’s about it . Bright and early on Saturday morning Hanne, Hesam and I awoke to head on over to Holland for a long weekend! In Holland we managed to visit Den Haag, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, as well as meeting up with Ferdinand. We spent an evening by the sea side at Schreveningen, although (as expected) the weather wasn’t great, but it was still nice to get some fresh, sea-salty air. We only had a few hours in Amsterdam on Sunday, but we managed to do a fair bit of walking, visiting the flower market, walking past Anne Frank’s hiding house (we were going to go in, but the lines were ridiculous), and pedalling up and down the canals in a boat. All the photos from Holland are also in the gallery.

Unfortunately Hesam seemed to pick the worst week of the summer to come to England. I SWEAR it had been sunny for the two weeks prior to him arriving, and it’s sunny now that he’s gone off to the Netherlands, but the week that here was here we saw the sun once, maybe twice, and only for a few minutes on each occasion! Bleh. Come to think of it, I can prove it! Check out this FlickR gallery! Someone is taking pictures in Selly Oak (just outside of the Birmingham central area) of the weather each day as part of a year-long project! Hah! Sunshine!

Now Hanne and I are back in Birmingham, back in the swing of our day jobs… then again, I only have a 3 day week as I shall be returning to Holland on Friday for DANCE VALLEY 2005! Hesam and I will have 2 nights of camping surrounded by thousands of dance-music freaks like myself… this will definitely be an experience I won’t soon forget. Expect more pictures next week!

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