Happy Holland-Days!

I do apologise for the dreadful pun.  I've been spending the Christmas/New Year break in Lelystad, Holland with my boyfriend and thought I'd share some of what I've/we've been up to.  I liked these Christmas decorations at Gatwick airport, there's even a mini Harrods store, without the crowds or getting lost (I think I've been to Harrods at least five times now, and I still get lost in there)!

We did some Christmas shopping at the Lelystad town centre the other day, I thought these window displays were absolutely stunning!!

Perhaps not terribly practical for wear though.

I also got to attend Dennis's work Christmas dinner the Friday night before Christmas, which was quite fun. Met his workmates at this groovy little restaurant in Lelystad.

Those 'curlers' in her hair are lemons.

The menu covers were really cool (although not sure how they related to the food!) and the toilet doors were hilarious!

The food was pretty tasty too! Here are our entrees:

My beef and bean sprout salad was delicious, if a little salty.  I tried Dennis's carpaccio which was also lovely.  For main I stuck with a plain schnitzel and mushroom sauce which was a little underwhelming, but hey, it was free (the coleslaw and chips were yummy)!

But oh, the dessert made up for it! Mine was called "Loving Choco" - a warm chocolate muffin with caramel fudge AND warm chocolate sauce, with whipped cream and vanilla ice-cream!! Mmmm heaven!  

Those little white things (Dennis joked that they were cigarette butts) were the texture of musk lollies but a different flavour. Not sure what they were but they tasted nice! Dennis had an epic ice-cream plate.

If you're ever in Holland and want to visit, the restaurant is called De Rede and the Lelystad webpage can be found here.  It's all in Dutch though!

Spent Christmas Day with Dennis's family, had a yummy brunch and just hung out for the day, nice and relaxed.  Their Christmas tree was so pretty!

We went back again for New Year's Eve and ate oliebollen and apple fritters and played trivial pursuit with the neighbours.  In Holland anybody can buy fireworks and let them off, the two weeks before Christmas I was constantly jumping when kids let random fireworks off in the street (sounded like we were living in a war zone with bombs going off all the time!) which Dennis found very amusing. So at midnight on New Year's we went and stood in the street outside his parent's house and watched fireworks going off in every direction all around us.  It was pretty cool, but also cold and raining so we went back inside.

Another day we had a little outing, went for a ride to the harbour to see a replica of The Batavia.  The Batavia is famous for being shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1629 and some of the crew then mutinied and butchered many of the other survivors. I actually used to live near the Batavia Coast in Western Australia and I've seen the wreckage of the original ship at the Maritime Museum in Geraldton, so I was very interested in seeing the replica in it's homeland!

There is also a pretty cool shopping outlet just next to the ship so we went and had a look.  I liked how it was ship-themed, with cannons in the walls and a whale sculpture for kids to play on.

There was even a fake ice-skating rink!

There were some interesting sculptures in the area as well.  The wooden one is supposed to resemble the struts of a ship and the white head thing is apparently something to do with the founder of Lelystad.  Not sure what the squatting man is all about though.