Summer Vacation!

I don't know about you but I had never seen anything like this in my life until Astrid pointed it out to me. When a kid graduates from high school here in The Netherlands (not grade school and not college), this is what happens: the student's backpack is hung from the house with balloons and Holland flag and whatever. Anyone who sees it knows what has just happened.

The day of this picture was Saturday, June 19, when Astrid and I took the Fast Ferry to Rotterdam to meet up with 2 of our Shutterchance bloggers. On that street alone we saw 4 such packs hanging out the front of the house...and I imagined them as buddies having grown up going to school with each other. I hope they were all good friends.

Anyway, that day in Rotterdam was fun. While we waited for Nadiuska and Cherise to arrive, there on the riverfront a wedding shoot was taking place. With my 300 mm lens I was able to stay far enough away to not be obstrusive but to still get several fun shots.

This is the 'Cig Bity,' as my mom would say. Things like this happen there.

We weren't meeting up specifically for a photo hunt ourselves, we 4 gals, but how can you NOT hunt for photo ops everywhere you go when you're not in your neck of the woods! Once the two gals arrived, we started walking and talking and walking, across Rotterdam's famous Erasmus Bridge (lovingly referred to as The Swan by the locals) on our way to the New York Hotel where Astrid wanted us to eat lunch.

In this collage the bluish gray bridge is The Swan. See how tall and graceful she stands!
The river is the Nieuwe Maas on which is Europe's largest port, Rotterdam (where my truckpacks were shipped last year, if you remember), with images on both sides of the river. If you squint (or click to enlarge and then click the image again), the huge cruise ship in the bottom left-hand and right-hand corners is the world's 2nd largest cruise ship: the Norwegian Epic. It so happened to be in port that day, lucky us. At 4100 passengers, it's almost as big as the town I grew up in! (Astrid and I have decided to choose a smaller river-cruise ship, when the day comes....)

We moseyed on over to the New York Hotel (also in that bottom right-hand corner above), ate lunch and then went back outside to take more pictures. There sitting as pretty as you please was this Excalibur, just begging for a photo shoot. What a model for all of us.

We had so much fun acting like we were big-time photographers.
There you see Nadiuska (25) and Cherise (23). I could be their grandma. :)

We walked back over the Erasmus Bridge...the pretty swan...said our good-byes to the gals and hopped back on the Fast Ferry towards home. When it dawned on us that our Granny Towanda was parked within a few kilometers of Kinderdijk, home of 19 windmills in one spot, we decided to drive over and say HI.

We had last visited Kinderdijk two years previously, almost to the day. If you've paid attention, this is now the image I'm using as my blog's header. And yes, if you count, here are 13 of the 19 windmills. Talk about soulful!

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Some of you know that the World Cup soccer competition has been going on in South Africa now for about a month. Holland has won their first 4 games and today plays Brazil in the quarter-finals.
HUP HOLLAND.
It's a mad house these days in this neck of the woods.

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But tomorrow our focus totally changes as we begin a week's vacation in France, thanks again to Granny Towanda. That gal sure is getting around! We have Dutch friends who now live in SW France just north of Toulouse. Yes, we'll drive right by Paris and will wave for all you fans who won't believe we aren't stopping there for one minute. We've both been there at least twice and for now have other apples to pick....

We'll have a B&B night farther south before arriving at our friends' house on Sunday afternoon. On Wednesday morning we plan to head for home the long way, via Bordeaux and eventually the vicinity of Mont St. Michel and the Normandy beaches for 2 days before driving home on Saturday.

Miles to go before we sleep...but are we excited or what! I still can't believe France is basically in our backyard like this. It will be like driving to the family cottage in Michigan every summer and taking a week to do it.