Blog /The Parents are in Europe

April 06, 2012 22:16 +0000  |  Family Travel 1

So this post is a little late, but I did promise Noreen that I'd write something before the week is out. My parents came to visit last week, all the way from Kelowna, BC. It was wonderful to see them walk off that plane, and exciting to be able to show them the life I'm carving out for myself here. I lived in Ottawa and Toronto for about six years and with the exception of a brief visit from my father (and surrogate uncle) in my final year, I never really had the opportunity to share what my life outside of BC was like with my parents. This time however, the experience will be a little more thorough.

For the most part, their first experiences with the Netherlands was rather similar to my own: The instinctive aversion to the sound of Dutch, getting screwed by the NS (transit authority) payment system, and surprise at the low cost of food -- though my father did note that the Dutch appear to wrap every damn thing in plastic.

For tourist destinations, they mostly relied on me to point out the interesting sights in the city. Obviously, they wanted to visit the Red Light district (where my mom noted the absence of male prostitutes: "All I'm asking for is a little equality damnit"). At my suggestion, they checked out the Erotic Museum and giggled at some of the exhibits, and they also made a point of visiting somewhere-not-amsterdam. Since I live in Bussum, they decided to visit Utrecht, where they spent the day wandering through the old city and apparently marvelling at the soup in a cafe there.

They had the opportunity to meet and spend some time with Christina as well, which was prety neat. They all got along, and my parents were pretty impressed with her. I have a few nice pictures of Christina trying to explain my smartphone to my dad.

I suppose the other highlight for their trip was the Keukenhoff, a sort of Dutch Playland for flowers. Imagine walking for hours through gardens of sculpted flower beds: colours, and perfume pretty much everywhere. It's kind of a big deal here. Personally, it didn't do much for me, but my mom was pretty tickled :-)

Unfortunately, that week was mostly about them exploring the Netherlands on their own, since I had to do the day job thing. I wanted to ration my vacation across the year this time, so I only took one week off for their being here: this week. You see, after they left my apartment in Bussum on Monday, they went to Barcelona, and at this very moment I'm on a highspeed train to Paris where I'll be meeting them for some touristy goodness. We'll check out all the Paris stuff, take some pictures, and then head onto London, and eventually to Dublin. It'll be nice to get away from the day-to-day stuff and really do the vacation thing with my parents again. After all, the last time we did that... I think I was in high school.

Anyway, the entire visit is being catalogued online in pictures. If you're into that sort of thing, you can head on over to my G+ gallery.

Comments

Roy
10 Apr 2012, 2:29 p.m.  | 

Sounds fantastic say Hi to Mom and Dad...wish I was there!!

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