Sunday, June 27, 2010

A heartily dinner at Rotterdam with collegue

After the nice at Delft, I take the train to Rotterdam to meet my colleagues for dinner at a Morocco restaurant.
Get on the tram to reach somewhere near the restaurant. Tram is some sort like our bus , the difference is tram goes on the railway and connected with wire above on the normal road in city center.
The bridge that connect both side of Rotterdam.
This kind of scene is normal is Holland , just the matter of size of it, this is due to the many canals in Holland.

Some of my colleagues...There are consists of Morocco people, Dutch and Caribbean, but all lovely people



Appetite-brinjal, carrot with oranges , pepper chilly and squid rings. I love the brown color brinjal and carrot+orange, a very special way of cooking but it taste really good!

Second appetizer- something like chicken pie, a good one!



The following are the main dishes:Lamb with apricot, amond, plum - a very special combination but it's delicious!

Chicken with potataoes
Variety of fish

Desert

We took 4 and an half hour to finish all the meals...It's not that we are eating too slow, but the style Western countries serve food is almost 1 hour per dish...We have some bread and olive and drink before 20 minutes later they let us see the menu. After each dish, they will take order for the drink again...So total we drank 6 glasses of water each time ...some beer, wine, orange juice, tea etc....
Guess how much does the meal for 8 costs? RM2000!!!!! What a huge amount for us but normal for them (likely my boss treat me the meal =p)....but the Morocco food is really yummy, thumb up!

A day in Delft

Delft is a modern city with a historical heart.The city is well-known for its ties with the Dutch Royal family and the famous painter Vermeer. Delft is also world renowned for its Delft Blue earthenware and its lovely canals.

It was a sunny day with 26-28 degree celcius weather, so I decided to visit Delft in this lovely Saturday. It took me some time to take the bus and change some train to reach there. Initially plan to follow an hour guided tour for E5.50, but change my mind to discover this city myself through the historic walk , so at last I bought a guided map and booklet at the Tourist Information Point for E3.50.

During Saturday, there will be few streets selling variety of antique stuff, some sort like flee market.
The Town Hall

The New Church
Side view of the new church



Neo-Gothic Maria van Jesse church




the Oostpoort (East Gate)

The East Gate is the only remaining city gate of the eight gates Delft used to have.

The market selling fruits, flowers, bread, cheese etc..

There are a few couples getting married at the city hall that day..




The old church is a leaning tower ...



Former residence of Lambert van Meerten and is now the musuem.

Overall it's a beautiful and nice town =)


Sunday, June 20, 2010

Sightseeing in Gouda &Meeting my friend at Rotterdam


Visiting the windmill in Gouda...



It was a lovely Thursday evening meeting my friend at Rotterdam for a glass of beer and some fried chips under warm sun!She is a China friend of mine whom I knew from the voluntary internship half year ago, and both of us were so happy that we could meet after half year at Netherlands! She's currently working at a lawyer firm in Amsterdam, feel so grateful we have the chance to meet again ^^


The port of Rotterdam is one of the largest in the world. During World War II the city centre was devasted by bomb but has since been virtually rebuilt and now features modern architecture boasting one of the country's leading universities, a number of interesting museums and a large zoo.
Train back to Gouda in evening...
A cute dog at a friend's house where I have my BBQ and spent a Friday night at Dronden.

SEP day at Utrecht

Last Monday i have a day trip at Utrecht to meet the student in charged of the SEP program in Netherlands and also 2 other students having SEP at Netherlands. It was a great and lovely day! I met lots of friends, Thomas from Netherlands, Caroline from NewYoke, and Spela from Slovenia =)

First we have 2 hours tour around Utrecht campus , it's a big one!

one of the small lecturer hall
I love the library there so much, the building even won quite some architect award! It is damn comfortable and nice with an area where there are sofa like beds for you to sleep!






Exam hall of studentBig lecturer hall
In the afternoon after lunch, we watched the football match between Holland and Denmark at a pub in city center. Everyone is crazy about football here, there was 1.2 million people taking leave to watch the football match that day, and there are always traffic jam during match of Holland! Everyone wears orange shirt, or some weird shirts, caps, weird weird stuff that one can put on body....They even paint the car orange and products on sale would be a lot of orange colors just for the match! I forget to take down the picture of how crazy you would see people gathering at pub to watch football match, definitely can't see this in Malaysia's mamak stalls!



After that, we went to the dom of Utrecht , the highest tower !






We ended our tour having dinner at thomas's house with IIse and Thomas's parents. Nice lasagna, first time have melon together with smoked meat as combination and Morazella cheese!