Europe Trip Diary : Day 4 Part 2 (Keukenhoff)

Hi guysss :D..

Ready for part 2 of Day 4? Must warn you first, it's very photo-heavy! Tried to eliminate as much pictures as usual, but i can't! Must show them all to make sure you feel like you were there with me! *LOL*. What kind of photos you can expect to see in this entry? Something like this :

Yeah, lots of pretty flowers pictures to be expected, but i think i only took pictures with pink flowers *LOLOL* :p.

We just left Volendam on my last entry, then we went to an actual Cheese & Clog factory (or was it? Hm... I'm actually not so sure. Maybe it was a real factory but we didn't get to see the exact place where they actually made them, we only went to their demonstration  parts, it's less pretty than the one in Volendam but more "real" looking and we got to see the owner (pretty sure he was the owner) showed us how to make real clogs and all.

Saw a miniature wind mill and of course had to cam-whore first haha.

Then spotted this giant clog and L dragged me into it *___*.

It was pretty embarrassing because there was this Caucasian lady who was staring and smiling at us, maybe she was thinking "crazy Asian tourists!". LOL. First stop, cheese making station.

Those were real cheese, not fake ones like the ones we saw in Volendam haha, the lady at the back was the one who was staring at us outside :p

The owner explaining passionately about cheese making and different kinds of cheeses, too bad i've no interests of such things and i didn't remember a thing he said *LOL*

Kikie translating, he sounded like a TV evangelist, really! LOL. He totally annoyed me LOLOL.

Then we went to the next section...

Next is the clog making section!

It was made from poplar wood, and if i remembered correctly, they soaked it until it was soft and easy to chop. Was it really easy? He called for an audience to try chopping the wood off. The aunties cheered for their idol, hunny *LOLOLOL*.

Who barely able to scrape the skin off the trunk *LOLOLOL*, the eccentric looking owner's a lot stronger than he looked!

Hunny and his trophy haha

The owner then went on to show us how the wood was shaped into a clog with a machine, it was actually a duplicating machine, he compared the process to key-duplicating process.

I think he looked more like a mad scientist than a clog maker hahaha

Then we proceed to the store, sampled on wine and lots of cheese! I was never a cheese person, i never liked food with cheese on it, but i'm a convert now! After trying out Dutch crazy varieties of cheese, i think i love (some) cheese now! My fave is the smoked cheese and chilli cheese! We bought a huge chunk of smoked cheese since it was our fave.

Look at Kikie gorging on samples! LOL!

I've never seen someone gorging on samples like Kikie did, i believe he consumed a block of cheese by himself in total. And the wine? He went nuts, and L did too! I wouldn't be surprised if they finished a bottle worth of sample between them!

Of course i behaved and only had one tiny glass of wine haha

Kikie also kept on encouraging us to gorge on the samples *LOLOLOL*, shoving the samples our ways. He totally embodies the word "kiasu" to a T.

Oops, you caught me!

The the clog section, as usual L forced me to do weird poses haha.

Like this one!

There were so many pretty and colorful clogs, but i wasn't interested to buy any haha, i'm not into decorative things and i won't be using a clog anyway, we wore one while having our Dutch costume photo shoot and it was super difficult and painful to wear!

Pink clogs! Well, it's hot pink, but better than any other shade lah haha

Only bought the one cheese and hurried outside, tummy full of free samples hahahahaha, and of course, cam-whored some more haha.

Mini farm outside the cheese & clog factory

Hunny was awestruck seeing huge chickens

Wonder if he's thinking of frying'em? Hahahaha...

He spotted a cute little goat and called it

Surprisingly it came to him like a dog!

Seriously acting like a dog, licking him hands and all! He also enjoyed being scratched and hunny compared it to me zzzz WTF

Even fed from his hand even though he only fed it grass like the ones inside its fence HAHAHAHA. The goat must be a girl :p

Was attracted to those almost bald trees, i think it looked mystical and mysterious hahaha (just because that's not something you'd find in Indonesia lah hahaha)

Hunny posing in front of our bus :p

Next destination : Keukenhoff! It's the world's largest flower garden and we came while the flowers were in full blooms *or so Kikie and the tour staff that sold the tour package to us said*. People from all over the world came here around those times especially to view the most beautiful tulips in the world haha, Holland's famous for its super beautiful tulips right...

Too bad we didn't actually have a picture right outside the garden, because we were rushed to get in.. One thing i do not like about being in a tour group was definitely the whole rushing thing, it's not so nice constantly being rushed you know *LOL*. Anyway, let's go explore Keukenhoff!

Sights that would greet you once you entered Keukenhoff :). To be honest, we weren't all that thrilled to be going to a garden *LOLOL*, not flower or plant loving kinda people i guess. Not that we didn't enjoy it, it really was beautiful and the weather also very refreshing, we were just surprised at the amount of time given to us, can't remember how long it was precisely but it kinda seemed excessive for us *LOL*, 3 hours i think? Kikie said the aunties were really excited, well..of course... But we're hardly aunties, aren't we?

We were taken to the heart of the super huge garden (seriously, i felt like the garden was never ending!), close by the glass house where all the prettiest flowers were in display. We speed-walked since we were kinda left behind while we were busy snapping the pictures along the way, and somehow we lost L and Eek. No time to look for them, we were busy taking in the beautiful surrounding, and ... what else but cam-whore, eh?

City boy was amazed when he spotted the hay-seat *LOL* "Hey, it's really made from hay! The whole seat!"

See the huge wind mill (it was a real one! Not a miniature one from before haha. It's an old fashioned one lah, i guess they almost do not use this type anymore but for display purposes. I'll show you their current windmill sometimes in next entries okay!) behind me? While we were approaching it, we heard people calling our names from up there!

Can you see them?

It's Eek and L!!! When did they get there? LOL!

They beckoned us up, so we went, even though i was shaking the whole time i was climbing (i'm not in love with height but i am also not deathly scared of them, but i do HATE stairs! They scares the heck out of me! Especially the rickety, wooden types which you could see the space from between steps!) The climb was worth it though, because..

of this! The view from up there. See the rainbow line behind us? It was actually flowers!

You'll see this when you're up in the windmill

L and Eek went down first to take our pictures from down there, the picture's still in Eek's camera unfortunately :). As soon as we got down, Eek was busy buying food lah haha.

Dunno what to call this, was it a sandwich or a hotdog? But it was good lah haha

I saw some really juicy looking strawberries earlier and i couldn't resists.. It was pretty pricey, but hey... Dunno when we'd be back there, it's not like you could eat strawberries in the middle of Keukenhoff everyday hahaha..

They were pretty huge! Not sweet unfortunately, but not too sour either..

Sat around for a bit to snack and spotted Kikie..

Hunny decided it was the perfect time for ice cream *LOL*.

Yomm...

Dutch ice cream were quite special, they seemed to have the same consistency (i mean compared to the one we had earlier at Volendam), very milky and creamy with a very home-made feeling.

We saw lots of HUGE doggies, mostly in black. Silly me, but i never knew golden retriever came in black as well? LOL. Just not used to seeing them :p, i always thought they only came in gold or white-ish hahaha. Hunny snapped this picture for #Undecided's husband, i guess he'd never remember to actually show it to him so i'll just put it here so #Undecided can show it to her hubby haha.

After seeing the cute boat and the bridge from the windmill i insisted on taking pictures there. Had to wait for a very long time for some other tourists to finish cam-whoring, i swear they took forever *___*.

Waiting (im)patiently

At last they were done! And at least they were apologetic for making us wait for so long :) so all's good.

The boat unexpectedly swayed, i thought it was nailed firmly on the planks huhuhu, i do not have the best balance you know, i almost chickened out but got pulled by L. Seriously, i hate walking on scary, uneven grounds, had the worst memory trying to cross a very scarily structured temporary bridge nearby #Undecided's place when we had a photo shoot back then. I swore to myself, never again! ZZZ. And it was flooding a bit on the boat as well, really scared it was going to sink or capsize lah hahaha.

Hahaha, Eek looking like a prof photog there

Feels a bit like a pre-wed picture here hahahaha

Walked around enjoying the sun (i can't believe i'm saying this *LOL*, we avoid them like crazy in Indonesia :p), spotted another snack corner and decided to get some coffee because i was getting a bit sleepy. Hunny saw a huge, cool guy covered in tattoos, he asked me to take his picture with him, i totally thought he was going to stand near him so i could take the picture sneakily, he totally surprised me with going straight to the man and asked him outright "Can i take a picture with you?" LOL. The guy's very nice and friendly and he said, sure! And roared with laughter, i guess he found it flattering that someone wanted to take a picture with him :).

Thank you for being so nice, Mr. Cool Guy! Not everybody's nice enough to entertain strangers' requests to take a picture with them hahaha...

We hunted for a picnic table to sit on while having our second round of snacks, but all the tables were occupied, but we found a seat (without the table) later. Meanwhile hunny saw some guys laying on the grass, some even really sleeping, and was envious. I told him to go lay down but the bravest he got was..

to sit on the ground like this haha

L and Eek struck a convo with a Caucasian lady who had two babies in a double stroller, they were attracted to te stroller you see. Problem of parents who has two very young children of similar ages haha..

My coffee and hunny's apple pie

And we finally went to the main attraction, the glass house where the tulips were.

Hmm, i'm not a flower person *LOL*. They really were pretty, so pretty they looked fake! But like i said, i was only interested on the baby pink and lavender colored ones hahaha.

My favorite!

Okay lah i snapped some other colored flowers' pictures, for the sake of this blog hahaha.

Eek made me snapped a pic of these flowers :

Because of the name, that's my mum's name hahaha

That's almost all of the pictures of the flowers i snapped *LOL*, told ya i'm not a flower person! Hunny was more into it than me, in fact! Pictures of flowers below i stole from his mobile phone haha.

Wahh, this one's so pretty ya!

Hunny forced me to take more pictures with the flowers *LOL.

Didn't take long for L and i to get bored of the flowers *LOL*.

I dunno why but my digestion system got really overworked in Europe (and it still is until now!), i'd be having to go to the toilet like, 3-4 times a day? I guess i did ate a LOT there WTF. As soon as we exited the glass house, i had to run to the toilet while the others were busy checking out the souvenir shop *LOL*.

When i finished, they were hovering over collectibles souvenir coins machine.

There were two machines, the first one you put in a EUR 1 and 5 cent to the machine and they'd re-stamp and crushed you 5 cent coin :

Put in the first two coins and you'll create the third!

Silly L was like, "Where's my 5 cents???" well, it's been turned into the souvenir coin, silly!

Then they went to try the second one and went a little crazy. Put in too much coins so we wanted to get the second one (no change came out!), but it took them so long to exchange the money at the souvenir shop that the machine kinda "swallowed" the extra money :(. They still got the coins though. L and hunny went gaga over them, while i wasn't too into it haha.. Guess they were both more of a souvenir person than me... (L even get some more in in Paris! Maybe more than one more? I can't remember...)

The second coin's so pretty L went to get the silver one too.

I can't remember why we sat down again, probably just to let me take those coins' pictures in peace hahaha.

Then we figured it was time to go to the meet up spot *the entrance*. Took more pictures along the way, got lost a few times because we couldn't find the right way *LOL* thank God we decided to move way earlier so we had plenty of time to figure out the right way out. Our "path finders" were hunny and L since i am super crappy at finding/remembering ways and Eek said he was as bad as me, but turned out our path finders were actually quite bad *LOLOL*, they kept on getting lost and refused to admit so, had to listen to Eek and L bicker-bantering a bit *LOL*.

Asked hunny to take a picture with the little creek as the background, where's the creek? Oh there it was, hiding at the far corner zzzz

second take *LOL*

I'll always take the best pictures..

Oh, we passed by some garden worker and saw a very cute one, i was like "OMG, even their gardener's so hot", and L said loudly (while staring at him) "OMG yes, so ganteng!" (ganteng = handsome in Indonesia), and the guy actually stopped and looked at us. OMG OMG. I dunno if he understood what ganteng means (because a lot of Indonesian words were taken from Dutch words since we were once their colony, and lots of Dutch understand Indonesian words!), but it was a pretty embarrassing moment! We switched to Javanese immediately *LOLOL*, no more loud Indonesian convo while talking about Dutch people!

I hate when people make me squat while taking pictures, you can see here that i do not know how to squat properly *LOL*, my former trainer would so kill me!

Wahh, i love this picture!

We finally found our way to the meeting place and was actually early, so we had time to sit around and had more warm drinks (or Eek did, i dunno how many cups of hot chocolate he had in one day, probably more than 3 hahaha). 

We were done for the day and we made our way to our second hotel, i was asleep on the bus but was jerked awake because i urgently needed to pee!!! It's annoying when tour leader was like "I told y'all not to drink so much!", hello i had a cup of coffee the whole afternoon, i couldn't help it if i needed to pee! It's not a crime when you had to, once in a while you know! 

And it annoys me even worse when i found out that almost all of the others needed to pee as well but didn't want to say it out loud! This happened more than once lah, once upon a time i had to pee very badly while taking a bus from Singapore to KL, asked the stupid driver to stop by a rest area but he kept on passing them, i was so desperate i was half crying, and was ready to pee into a plastic bag. I'm not kidding, i already lowered my panties and all. 

It's not that i demanded to go to the toilet every hour or so, but once in 3-4 hours' humane and i really want to box people's face who complained whenever i needed to do so! Seriously, a few minutes of a toilet break won't delay the schedule lah, unless you don't mind if i soil the bus' seat then whatever lah. As soon as the bus stopped almost everybody will go out running to the toilet WTF. It's just always me who dared to demand for the bus to effing stop!!!

Anyway, our second hotel was located in Eindhoven, it was somewhere in the woods! LOL. I swear we were just in the highway and suddenly there was our hotel, was it in the middle of the highway??? It could be! We're staying at Novotel and this was my 2nd favorite hotel out of all of the hotels we stayed in during the trip! Yes, it was sleek and modern, just the way i like my hotels :).

We checked in quickly and had to come down ASAP for dinner (in the hotel's restaurant), but i managed to snap some pictures of the room first (using my crappy Blackberry camera because my camera's battery's dying already).

Always love when a hotel's spacious enough to have an area for your luggage and to hang your clothes

It's definitely one of the more spacious hotel room that we got, there was even enough space for a sofa *love*

They even provided magazines for you, unfortunately everything's in Dutch so i couldn't read any @___@

The bathroom was nice and sparkling clean as well.

I just don't understand the half glass separator, what's the point? The floor would still be soaking wet anyway *LOL*, at least it's not gross like a shower curtain..

Went down quickly for dinner..

Cleaning service?

We had a nice dinner, and got to know some of our fellow group members better. I assure you we had the nicest aunties in our table that night!

Wah, even uncle R was posing from the other table! LOL... That's Mr Lubos, our driver at the front!

The ambience of the hotel's restaurant's also very nice and cozy, i totally love this hotel!

This side looked a bit weird, almost desert-like *LOL*

Dinner that night was not Chinese food, thank God :p. But i don't think it's Western either *___*...

Bread for appetizer? LOL

No lah, bread to eat with THIS appetizer, it's a creamy curry-like soup

Huge chunk of chicken with rice, it was too sweet for my liking, Eek brought out the hot sambals he packed and we had lots of them with the rice and it was better *Indonesian* LOL

Sweet and sour pudding, it was okay and i'm the kind of person who always try to finish my food, but i was too full and it's kinda too rich for me so i really couldn't..

Kikie said the cook should be really hurt, we ruined his food with super strong sambals and most didn't even touch the desert *LOL*.

It wasn't late but the hotel's in the middle of nowhere so we cannot go anywhere, plus the hotel's so nice so we all went up to rest up and enjoy the room... I was always exhausted and fell asleep really fast in Europe, miss those days *LOL*, no need for sweet dreams pills! Passed by this seat for one in the restaurant and dunno if it's actually common but i found it really cute so i snapped a picture anyway.

A private TV so you wouldn't feel to lonely eating alone?

Not that i would sit there, TV shows in Europe were all in their native language, even the American shows were dubbed so i couldn't watch TV the whole time we were in Europe anyway, didn't understand a word! Really sad because i saw nice TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and New Girl and How I Met Your Mother, but what's the use when you didn't understand what they were saying anyway!

That ended Day 4! Are you looking forward to Day 5? We were in three different countries within one day on Day 5! 

Toodles for now!

#Pink