Wednesday 19 March 2008

A lovely trip...

We're home... we had a wonderful break in Amsterdam and were thrilled with the Cook suite at The Flying Pancake. It was a great place to stay and the proprietor, Claudia Veldkamp, donates a small portion of the room charge to charity. How great is that!

Lunch at De Kas on Friday afternoon was AMAZING. They serve a four course set menu at lunchtime -- actually you have three starters at the same time followed by the main course (we had grey mullet with a white bean cassoulet and blood orange). The restaurant, which is housed in a greenhouse dated 1926, harvest much of it's own produce on site, and also on it's own land in the north of Holland. The food was so good we couldn't resists ordering one dessert to share as well...

It was great to spend time with our friends, and on Saturday we enjoyed a lovely afternoon visiting the Dick Bruna Huis together in Utrecht, something I have wanted to do for quite some time. Despite having sold more than 85 million books worldwide, Dick Bruna continues to live in the same house in Utrecht he always has, and follows the same routine, cycling to his studio, every day.

We couldn't resist, this little fella had to come home with us from the museum shop... meet little black bear.

6 comments:

Ana said...

seeing this has made me miss NL so much. The Kroller Muller museum is practically my home.

Anonymous said...

I love Amsterdam, and would love to spend more time travelling round the country!

orange you lucky! said...

I'm sooooo soooo jealous! Amsterdam, the amazing Dick Bruno...ah...sounds great!

Fine Little Day said...

Wanna go to Dick Bruna Huis too.

Sophie Chalumeau said...

hi, many thanks for the tips. I'll definitely check out the Flying Pancake hotel. Did you get a chance to go to the Kröller-Müller Museum?

Anonymous said...

Sophie C., sadly we didn't have enough time to visit the Kröller-Müller Museum this time. Dick Bruna took priority on this trip. We have visited the museum before though and thoroughly recommend that you go if you haven't been. The national park is a lovely place too, and you can use one of the white bikes to cycle round. The Kröller-Müller Museum is THE place to go to see Van Gough...