Visiting family in Den Haag

Wednesday Oct 24th

Today was a very busy day with family!  We picked up my cousin Jeroen from the tram stop in Den Haag after his business meeting in the morning and brought him back to the cabin for lunch. Gave us time to catch up before meeting up with his dad and mom.  He brought both Mar and I lovely bouquets of roses :)

After lunch we went to the hospice where my aunt is now living because of her dementia. My uncle lives right across the street in his own apartment that they shared up until a year and a half ago.  He visits my aunt everyday at 2pm for a couple of hours. Today my uncle has reserved a table for a bunch of us in the restaurant located in the hospice.  We met both my uncle and cousin Maarten walking after we parked the car. Once at the restaurant we met up with Noelle and Eric. Noelle had gone up to bring my aunt down. So by the time she got down we were are settled at the table. My aunt was very surprised with all the visitors! Think she may have recognized us but not sure. She was in good spirits and enjoyed the visit for almost 2 hours before getting tired. We stayed a little longer and visited with Jeroen while my uncle took my aunt back to her room.  Maarten left to go visit Derek at his studio (which we will do Thurs)  Noelle and Eric went home to pack for their trip to Paris tomorrow and to get dinner ready for us :)

Noelle and her mom - my mom's sister

the whole motley crew! Missing 2 of the brothers

My uncle 

Siblings :) :) 

Once my uncle returned Jeroen went with him to his apartment to enjoy some herring and beer! LOL!!  We went back to the cabin to pickup some wine and headed to Noelle's .

Dinner at the Bosscher's 

Jaap came late because he had a ball hockey practice.

Noelle made us a lovely Suriname dinner with chicken legs and thighs in a spicy sauce and along with roti - a type of huge tortilla but it was like 2 tortillas together with cornmeal between. Very tasty! Really enjoyed the dinner and the wine. For dessert it was also a Suriname favourite which has many layers of thin cake with flavouring between the layers. She had picked almond, pistachio and plain,  the almond I found the best :)  Delicious meal!  By 9 it was time to head home and let them finish packing for their trip with the kids for a few days in Paris.

Thursday Oct 25th

Today again it is cloudy and drizzling as it has for the last few days. We have no where to go today until after lunch. So lounged around and packed a few things so save on rushing tomorrow. After lunch we drove over to Derek's studio

Once we got there we enjoyed coffee and talking about his art. Mar and I also bought 2 of his water color paintings he did about 7 years ago. He had quite a few in his "backroom" :)  Soon after he painted those paintings he started having problems with his muscles and now unable to paint but he does work with wood. Using a very fine scroll saw and files, he creates pictures and mosaics.  Very interesting work. To bad I forgot to take a picture of the paintings before we got it packed for the trip back to Canada :(

But soon it was time to go since our parking time was running out.  We drove around Den Haag a little but soon headed back to the cabin. On the way we stopped at the local shopping centre and bought some nice "gebak" treats for dessert tonight :) And one more stop at the fish vendor :)

In Derek's studio

This is a commissioned work. He still has to cut out the light brown parts of the picture. These completed works are then hung in windows

Closer look at his wood workings

I impressed the fish vendor LOL!! 

YUM!!!

Tomorrow we pack up and go to our final stop, an Air BnB in Leiden. We also called the rental car Enterprise and will be keeping the car and dropping it off at the airport on Saturday morning instead of the original idea of Amsterdam with Dwayne and I taking the train back to Leiden. The cost of the train and bus to Amsterdam and then to the airport is more expensive then keeping the car one extra day split 3 ways. Nothing to say a lot more convenient :)  Now we can do more touring of Leiden on our last day :)