Amsterdam! One of my all time favourite cities. It has been a long time since I’ve been back – The Joepster on the other hand has made it back with some regularity since our departure for Canada 2 years ago. After an amazing month in South Africa celebrating being a married couple (and excelling might I add), we set off from Vic Falls, Zimbabwe at 10am to make our 12pm flight to Jo’berg followed by a 4-hour layover before our flight to Amsterdam (via London). It was a long flight. Neither of us slept very well. We were jammed in like sardines at the start of the flight when a flight attendant approached us to offer Joep the only emergency exit seat left. I was ecstatic at the thought of having 2 seats to myself and some leg room (sitting next to a giant in economy means you never have any leg room). Joep however, proclaimed loudly that he would prefer to sit with his wife.
Romantic yes? Only kind of. I felt bad for my earlier feelings of ecstasy but my guilt soon subsided when, after 14 hours of no sleep and no space and asking Joep numerous times why he wouldn’t take the emergency exit seat I was informed that the reason he didn’t want the emergency exit was because there wasn’t a lot of leg room there either. It was better to sit next to me where he could have his leg room AND my leg room and even squeeze onto my seat a bit as well. Sigh.
Needless to say we were both exhausted by the time we landed in Amsterdam. However we were very blessed because Ozzi had offered to pick us up from Schiphol! Spoiled we are. We were even MORE spoiled because our good friends Nicole & John had very kindly allowed us to use their amazing apartment for our days in Amsterdam. So after collecting our rental car we headed to the worlds’ greatest apartment. Most spoiled people on earth.
Alas, the necessary R&R after such a long commute was not to be had. We had appointments to attend to … ahhh welcome to Holland! I forgot how busy it is in Holland. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we were happy to see everyone but boy is it tough having so many appointments all the time. After dropping our bags at the apartment and having a very quick shower we were off to Venray to visit various friends and family. We drove from home to home saying hello’s and cuddling the worlds cutest new born baby girl and by 10pm I was beat. Completely and totally beat.
We drove the last hour home in silence both of us just trying to keep our eyes open. Exhausted.
A good but all too short night of sleep awaited us and we were up at the crack of dawn to meet the mother ship at Schiphol! Excitement!! The day that followed was uber busy with preparing things for our ‘Meet the Newlyweds Party’. Joep found an amazing cheese shop where the owner (who was Scottish btw) was amazed by the cheese tower concept and agreed with glee to make one for us. Mum & I contributed our culinary expertise to picking out the right cheeses … it was a tough choice. Cheese in Holland rocks my world. Oliebollen were ordered, the Wildschut was visited where Joep, mum and I arranged the final details for the party. By the late afternoon we were pooped.
But there is no rest for the wicked because even more excitement awaited us – Sheenzie was arriving!!
And to top it all off, this was Joep’s big 31st birthday! Oh my goodness, too much excitement. That evening we celebrated Joep’s birthday with a nice meal and a few glasses of wine. The evening ended on a very giddy note with mum & Sheenz which proved to be a great sign of things to come.
Once again, a late night was followed by a very early morning as it was the day of our partaaaaay and we had things to plan and guests in the form of the Delany family to entertain. As Joep ran a few last minute errands for the party I collected Sheenz and mum and we hit the streets of Amsterdam for some retail therapy and lots of laughs. I had so many moments during the day where I took mental snap shots so that I will forever remember times like this. There is nothing like hanging out with your sisters and mum to make your heart feel warm and fuzzy. Especially when said mother and sister are completely giddy and willing to laugh at just about anything. Heaven. I am very blessed.
After a good amount of soaking up Amsterdam’s glory (oh how I love this city!) and sharing innumerable laughs we headed back to our respective homes. Thankfully however, mum and Sheenz had agreed to get ready and then come to help me get ready because squeezing into my wedding dress again was going to be quite the challenge.
Still, despite all the excessive eating in Africa, I still somehow managed to fit into my dress!! Dear lord thank you for my fast metabolism.
All glammed up and ready to go we grabbed a taxi with the 4 of us to re-celebrate our married bliss!!
The party at Wildschut was yet another wonderful evening. The food was (apparently) good – I guess you can’t go wrong with fries in a cone right? The cheese tower was out of this world … seriously our Dutch / Scottish friend did an incredible job and the oliebollen were a hit. The guests were all in high spirits and the booze was free flowing. Man oh man, it was a big night. Huge kudo’s go to mum & Sheenz for travelling all that way and being the life of the party not to mention cousin Lauren & her wonderful social albatross Cyrus who fully embraced the party spirit. We had a blasty and at 3am we decided NOT to go onto another bar but instead to go home to bed. It was a good choice.
We spent a good few hours eating and chatting and laughing about some of the more random things that happened during my time in Amsterdam before it was time to head off to continue our Amsterdam tour. Our old apartment (**sob sob** how we miss that apartment), Bloemgracht, the Anne Frank house, Westerkerk and, of course, the red light district were next on the list. Mum was, once again, appalled by the red light district, which provided Sheenz and I with much amusement. Later in the evening feeling positively exhausted we met up with cousin Lauren & Cyrus for a wonderful NYE of Chinese food and more wine.
When we all met up we discussed how we had all partied to excess the previous evening and we were feeling under the weather. We also discussed the fact that Lauren & Cyrus had no reason to be too mortified by their behaviour the previous evening (despite the fact that Boris’s mouse in a party hat was NOT lean against a wall funny and also keeping in mind the fact that noone really needs to know about your level of skill with each of the basketball requirements … oh yes, and Billy Joel’s ‘We didn’t start the fire’ is easily mistaken for Journey’s ‘Don’t stop believing’. Seriously. Try singing it. It works.). We celebrate the fact that Lauren found her lost handbag and we laughed. Hard. And long. In addition, Joep’s proposal that we have just 1 glass of wine to help our hangovers was warmly accepted and 1 glass turned into 1 bottle, turned into another and then another …
Before we knew it, it was close to midnight and mum & Sheenz were heading home early because they didn’t want to get stuck in the fireworks. It was a good choice. I forgot how nuts Amsterdam gets at NYE!
Having safely gotten mum & Sheenz home, the 4 of us stayed up to ring in 2012 with great friends / family, fireworks and champagne. And so, as the fireworks boomed around us, we were surrounded by crazy Delany’s and we smooched at midnight, I really felt like the luckiest gal on earth. I cannot imagine how life gets any better than this!!
The fireworks died down in the early hours of the morning and we went our separate ways allowing Joep & I to have our requisite few hours of sleep before awaking early to take mum and Sheenz to Schiphol for their respective flights. Boo. It was a shame to say goodbye but boy do we have some awesome memories from those days together!!
Joep & I spent the rest of the day running errands before I met up with Liessie for dinner followed by drinks with the Beckster and Joep had drinks with Ozzi. Our last night in Amsterdam was another late one and when our alarm went off at 6am the following morning we were beat. 150% beat.
We headed to Schiphol, checked in and awaited our flight to Buenos Aires via Rome to start month 2 of honeymoon!
To summarize … 2011 was an incredible year!! Here are my favourite moments of the year as briefly as possible:
- Ringing in the year in Puno, Peru on Lake Titicaca with crazy fireworks and wonderful German friends.
- Joep’s Australian visa getting approved allowing us to begin planning a move to the land down under!
- Living the amazing Canadian dream with great friends, amazing city and far too many great nights in Ottawa (the BBQ at Anne & Louis’ place after Art in the Park will forever stick in my mind as one of the best evenings of my life).
- Having the wonderful opportunity to live in Laguna Beach and enjoy as much of California as possible.
- Yosemite National Park with the Mc El Mothe’s – One of the greatest trips we’ve done with 2 of the greatest people we know.
- Napa Valley & Big Sur … one helluva long weekend. We loved every second of it. Even with the ‘tommy style’ bed.
- Turning 30 in New Orleans and going sky diving! Loved it!
- Catching up with Julz in New Zealand – A great old friend, a great country, a lot of laughs. Nuff said.
- Getting hitched!! We are loving (and rocking) being Mr. & Mrs. Vaessen!
- Honeymooning it up in Africa … boy oh boy what a way to celebrate marital bliss and end the year on a high!
Here’s to a wonderful 2012 and many more amazing memories!!
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