My vacation in Holland

As promised, my photos of my vacation in the Netherlands last month. My mom and I stayed with an aunt in Drenthe and made a day-trip to my favorite city, Groningen, where I was born and studied at university. The last 3 days we visited and stayed over at a cousin in the vicinity of Utrecht, to the south. From there we visited castle Haarzuylen and castle Loevestein  (both of them we had never visited before!). We had lovely weather, around 22 Celcius, way nicer than the 30-plus celsius here in Israel and it even rained 2 days! Loved it!

As for shopping, I am always on the lookout for things that remind me of my own history and my family (I almost didn't bring anything with me when I emigrated 25 years ago).

Of course, I brought home lots of thrifty finds and other goodies!

The usual "Dutch food" list made up by the family at home was easy :)

Michal wanted wallpaper (can't get that here in Israel) and so I brought home 5 rolls of pretty damask wallpaper!

We visited the Brocante kip which is 5 minutes from my aunt's home.

My aunt knew a good thrift-store, which was really huge. We had planned to visit another but by then I was already fully packed.

And then of course, I got my grandmothers things (she died in 1978), which another aunt gave me (she died a week after I got back home, see earlier post). Below my grannie's "bowl" (punch)-cups (only 5 left) and tobacco pot which she used to keep her wool, thread, and needles to fix socks and missing buttons etc (everything is still inside),

Some of my Thrift store finds. These were all around 1-1.50 euro each. The tray and cloth-brush are both with traditional Dutch handpainted designs (Hinderloper art) which I really love.

a cute mismatched cup and saucer

a wooden plank to make traditional Dutch biscuits (taay, speculaas).

Brocante store finds,

these two Bosch "boerenbont" cups and saucers
(my parents had the complete dinner service of this) 

for 1.50 euros

Lovely unused heavy,  embroidered double bedsheet set 

with two pillowcases (12.50 euros)

Biscuit tin (for Dutch round "beschuit") as new condition.

and some other sentimental finds at the market :)

2 yards of this old traditional fabric (Staphorster roos?).
My grandmother had bed-linens from

this in her "bedstee" (build in small bedrooms in the wall)
and I want to make pillow covers of it.

and a beautiful large farmer handkerchief ( will make a nice throw pillow cover)

and of course, one can never have enough cups, so got a few of these cuties home too. Some of them were as cheap as 50 cents (normal store, sale price).

Can you believe we were still 7 kilos BELOW our allowedluggage-weight when we flew back home? :)