My endless love of old buildings yet needs to be satisfied, so today I went to a Kasteel de Haar (Castle de Haar). It’s located near Utrecht. The castle was built in the 14th century but the castle that we see today is actually a quite new building because it was rebuilt in the 1892-1912. The look of this castle is quite astonishing with bridge that resembles fortress entrance, huge gardens including rose gardens, canal-like pond and many statues. The furnitures and rooms inside the castles are still pretty much the same as they used to be in early days.
The family who owns this castle still use this place as a holiday home for 3-4 weeks every year, in which the castle would be closed for that period when they are there.

One thing that was a bit of a disappointments about this place is that we can’t take any photograph inside the building and we can only visit the inside of the building through a guided tour. For more information click on to www.kasteeldehaar.nl

One hour drive from Gouda, there’s a so-called former old Dutch fishing village named Volendam. Today this place is crammed with souvenirs shop, photos studios where you can get your pictures
taken wearing traditional Dutch clothes. But nevertheless it is a nice place with harbour and many boats. If you feel like it you can also take a boat trip to a small island of Marken, it’s a museum-piece village where you can see how it is an old Dutch village were like in olden day. Besides those we can also find nice seafood here such as the famous Dutch Hering which is eaten raw with chopped onion, smoked eel and cod, calamari, fried fish and many more.

I found something interesting though can be counted as unimportant matter. 🙂 When we were browsing through the display windows of the photo studios we found many pictures of famous Indonesian artists such as Marissa Haque and Ikang Fawzi, Ruth Sahanaya, Joshua and his brother, Melly Manuhutu and even Kris Biantoro. We of course didn’t get any pictures taken as it was expensive (17 euro for 2 persons then 5 euro for every additional person) and a little bit “katrok” to our standard. 😛 Halah bilang aja gak punya duit. 😛

Stomach full of patat (Dutch french fries), poffertjes, smoked eel, ice cream. Cameras full of pictures, Hands full of bags of souvenirs (iya kan Dit??) Eyes refreshed with nice view. It’s time to go home.

Woa got back last nite from Paris. Was tired but very happy!!!! It was quite tiring as it was only four days full of activities, pretty much like a crash tour of Paris. But I have to say Paris was more than what I expected. I thought Paris was just Eiffel Tower and some old buildings but not, Paris was awesome. I’m afraid I was so overwhelmed by the ccharm of Paris I can’t really describe it here.

For four days I saw many faces of Paris, visited the famous Eiffel Tower of course then Montparnasse Building where we can see panoramic view of Paris from 56th floor terrace, Notre Dame Cathedral; I am sure all of you know this from that famous Disney movie, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart); this is a a beautiful church up in the hill in fact this hill is the highest point in Paris, Centre Pompidou; we can find Museum of Modern Art and library here, St. Louis Church, Arch de Triomphe; A monument built to honours those who fought for France , Champs – Elysees; a famous street full of trendy and expensive boutiques, Anne Frank’s Park; not a very impressive park I must say, Jardin du Palais (Palace Royal Garden), St. Louis Church. Besides those I went to see a little cabaret show, done a boat trip around Seine river, strolling around Montmartre where they have cheap souvenirs shop (not cheap sidewalk cafe though I must warn you) and interesting street artist. We even went to Maincy to visit the Chateau Vaux le Vicomte, it’s a Chateau built in the 17th Century by a nobleman Fouquet.

In four days of course there are still many places that I missed though I am glad the bus passed it and we got the chance to see them and take pictures. Those are places like Les Invalides; the place where Napoleon was buried, The Louvre Museum; Monalisa is placed here, The Opera House, Orsay Museum and many more other places.

I highly recommended Paris as a holiday destination, have to see it at least once in a lifetime. But I am pretty sure I will come back someday as the legend believe, if you touch your feet at the point zero outside the Notre Dame Cathedral then you will definetely come back to Paris again. 🙂 😀

To see more pictures go to my flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/whittycute

I don’t know why but I love windmills, not the modern one though because I think it’s boring. I love the old-fashioned Dutch windmills. Though i do n’t really know and understand the use of windmills I just love them because of their shape and because they are old (I love all old-buildings). So to satisfy my needs to see windmills me and my boyfriend went to Kinderdijk. It’s a place in South Holland to see more than 15 windmills in one area. I know that they are build there for a reason but as I said before I don’t really understand those technical stuff so let’s just enjoy the beauty of those windmills. 😀

And tomorrow I’m going to Paris for 4 days. Can’t update my blog so I’ll see you guys in 4 days then. 🙂

What comes to your mind with the title? Cheese? Well you’re not wrong. But there’s something else other than cheese from that name. It’s the name of a little town in South Holland. Anyway no more chit chat, let’sgo to the main story. Today, Dita, Hesti and me decided to walk around the city. The first reason was to see the famous cheese market that is held every Thursday from June-August. And the rest we would see what we could do.

What is actually a cheese market? Peopl e buying and selling cheese? That’s right, but nowadays as I quote from Lonely Planet “the event was an excuse to set up a huge market to sell everything but cheese.” I think so too, as apart from a square full of cheeses and some boys and girls dressing up with traditional Dutch clothes, the rest was just a normal market. But nevertheless it was fun to watch. We also went to De Kaaswaag, this building used to be a place where people weigh cheeses, but now you can pay 2Euro to have yourself weigh there and you even got a certificate. 😛

After some snapshots of the market and the town hall we continued our journey. Now heading to St. Janskerk, the longest church in Holland as I read from it’s brochure. But what is special from this church that they have beautiful stained glass window. Most stories in the pictures are taken from the bible and Dutch National history. While we were there, we visited the Museum het Catharina Gasthuis which was located next to the church. A museum consisting of stuff about Gouda and it’s history.


Tired of walking around, time to feed our hungry tummy. 😛 We decided (no it was me who decided, as my friends said they would eat whatever I make) to just make some simple noodle soup like what I made the last time. And for dessert we had tiramisu that I made yesterday. 🙂 It was a nice sightseeing day wasn’t it girls?? 😀