Category Archives: Travel

Zuid Limburg

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Previous – Maastricht

Fully a third of all Tharash’s trip pictures were taken on this day, I think he might like this place. I also took a lot of pictures, so… this will probably have the most pictures of any post on this trip.

This day we went to the hostel’s dining room for breakfast; it’s a breakfast buffet that’s only an extra 10 euros, for which you can make as many broodjes as you like, or get boiled eggs, or yogurt, or cereal. Probably some other stuff too, I didn’t make a list. We’d also gotten the lunch package, where they give you a bag with some pre-prepared stuff and then you can make more broodjes from the breakfast material to put in it. The paper lunch bags were a bit big, so we transferred the materials to our backpacks – and the bottled water to our own waterbottles.

Then we headed out. Over a pedestrian bridge, past the Maastricht Museum, and to a bus stop under some trees. The bus went past the European Union monument; did you know the European Union agreement in 1993 was signed in Maastricht? They seem quite proud of it. Also the stars on the monument spin under certain conditions which is pretty funny and neat. The bus ride out to our destination was about half an hour, and then we had to walk another 15-20 minutes to get to the start of the walking tour we were going on. Continue reading →

Maastricht

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Previous – the Drentsche Aa

Sorry for the delay; first I was tired and didn’t feel like blogging for a bit, and then I was in the process (still am in the process really) of switching over to Linux because I’d like an operating system that doesn’t have a stupid nosy spying algorithm in it, THANKS Microsoft. As a Windows-girlie for the past 29 years, being on Kubuntu now has been a learning curve. Like I had to format my HDD so I could play my Steam games, and it took me 3 days to figure that out. And, relevant to this blogging endeavour, I had to find a new photo editing program. There are a bunch of things Linux does well, like it starts up super fast because it doesn’t have all of Windows’ deadweight bloat programs, but apparently straightening photos is not something people commonly use; I went through a dozen programs over two hours to find what I was looking for (apparently most people only want to rotate their photos 90 degrees? What, they’ve never taken a crooked picture before?? Or else it’s some pro-level program that’s much too time-consuming to use). Windows’ photo editor previously handled it very smoothly, so I could easily straighten every photo, and I was looking for something like that. The program on Linux that does the same thing in the same way is called Shotwell (and then I still need to use Gwenview to resize them, so it’s the same steps as on Windows because I need to resize my photos in Windows in Paint). (If you think they’re still crooked, don’t give me a hard time about it, some of these angles were hard to judge. >.> )

THAT ASIDE, here’s my new favourite Dutch city. Nearly 100 pictures of it.

The following three days were the highlight of my trip! I’ve got a separate post for each day because I took so many pictures on these days. Ever since I found out mosasaurs were named for the Meuse/Maas River, and definitely since Tharash gave me a mosasaur tooth for Christmas, I wanted to go see Mosasaur Central – I mean Maastricht. Continue reading →

The Drentsche Aa

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Previous – The Veluwe

We had another rest day after all that hiking in the Veluwe, and that was the day I ordered Japanese food for dinner from Diemen’s new Japanese restaurant, because Tharash’s family doesn’t eat Japanese food a lot, and I wanted to show them what I like to eat, like unagi (and also see if Japanese food is any good in the Netherlands). In person, it’s an all-you-can-eat, but we decided to get it as delivery and eat it at home (with our own alcoholic beverages etc). So… I accidentally got too much, partly because I can never estimate how much food I’m getting from a Japanese place (since it’s lots of little things) and partly because their website has super tiny pictures and minimal description, and sometimes the description is just plain wrong. Also they only take cash, so I had to paypal Tharash for it instead of paying the restaurant directly. : / Continue reading →

The Veluwe

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Previous – The Maritime Museum

The next day we took another rest day, and I really needed it. It was the day of the Diemen weekly market, and Tharash and I went along with his mom. There were bakery stalls, cheese stalls, butcher and fisher stalls, clothes stalls, garden plant stalls, it’s a fantastic town market. Maybe a couple drops of rain but not a problem. We got a lot of herring, because I love herring, and also some cumin cheese. Continue reading →

Utrecht

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[PSA: K-Pop Demon Hunters is a great movie; Tharash made me watch it last weekend and I’m a little bit obsessed. If you like comedy action drama with banger music, you should watch it too.]

Previous – Amsterdam

We took the Sunday off, during which time I read John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed, which was quite entertaining. And a bit existential, but I do have a tendency towards existentialism myself at the best of times. At dinner Tharash’s dad made a pizza that included sardines, olives, and red bell peppers. It was quite good! We had it a couple more times during my stay, too.

The first place we ended up going substantially away from home base for was Utrecht, where I had previously been in the winter, when it was a lot more grey (and yet not as rainy? lol foreshadowing). It was nice to be back again! It’s a lovely town, and the tower is no longer under restoration!

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Amsterdam

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Once again I have gone travelling, and this time returning to a place I haven’t stuck around much in for 13 years even though my best friend is from it: The Netherlands.

I was warned that there was the possibility of a heat wave, which I took very seriously and updated my wardrobe a lot. A new pair of jean shorts (designed for men, so does not quite fit my waist, but fits well enough that I don’t care, plus POCKETS), all-cotton bras instead of the synthetic ones I’ve been using until now, and two special new pieces of clothing. Continue reading →

Christmas 2024

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My friend came to visit again and we went some places. I’m uploading this in more of a photo-album-y way. At least half the pictures are his, I’m not tagging them this time.

My Christmas present from Tharash – a Mosasaur tooth!! I gave him Honkai Star Rail merch lol.

First tourist place we went, on like the Friday after Christmas, was to Mystic Beach. We stopped at a café called Shirley Delicious on the way and got sandwiches and cake to-go and then ate them on the beach. There had been a windstorm earlier in the week (Tharash’s plane arrived one day ahead of the wind, thank goodness) so you can see some damage to the trees; there were a lot of trees fallen across the path, which did not bother dogs or small children but was a bit more trouble for us. It was a bit muddy (and I don’t currently have hiking boots) but I survived. Also you will notice in the photos that Tharash likes fungi. Continue reading →

Belgian Christmas 2023: Utrecht

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Ghent

After Ghent, we didn’t go anywhere for like a week. There were certainly more touristy things to do in the Low Countries, but like I said before, my main objective was not to be a tourist. But we did discuss things we could see in the future, such as the Maastricht Natural History Museum, in relation to which I learned that the mosasaur is named after the Meuse (Maas) River which was absolutely shocking to me. Also shocking is the controversial history of the first mosasaur skull ever discovered, which French soldiers yoinked in 1794 and the French government has refused to return ever since, citing that someone was paid (though those circumstances are, from what I understand, dubious). Another place might be the historic pump Museum de Cruquius, the largest steam engine in the world, apparently.

So we read books, played games, listened to music, and cooked food, drank alcohol with the food occasionally. We watched the birds at the bird feeders in the mornings, Tharash has four bird feeders on his deck as well as a water dish. I did not get much creative writing done. That’s fine, I was in rest mode. Continue reading →

Belgian Christmas 2023: Ghent

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Antwerp

So to get to Ghent, as we did only two days after Antwerp, we did have to get up rather early because we had to take the train from Antwerp. We decided to go on that day because the weather was going to be nice. While I was in Europe, it was super windy pretty much every day, and it rained quite a few days, so if we were going to go places we wanted to go on not-rainy days.

We did not take this advice from the tourism website, but that’s okay:

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