Gordon in Gourdon

A number of years ago, my dad moved to Stonehaven (where he had always said he wanted to end up) with his bidie-in Elma and they had a house built to meet their needs. More recently, my dad had been saying that perhaps the house was a bit large and they were maybe considering downsizing. None of which really explains why they have just moved to a bigger house in the town of Gourdon, about 11 miles South of here. In fact, it is very hard to find a really good explanation of their move other than that they wanted a change. In any case, the house is massive, and the boys were really pleased to find a chute, swings, and a trampoline in the garden, and inside the house was a playroom complete with a little swing that suited Magnus just fine.

 

 

 

 

I wanna be a rockstar

 

As ever, Vikki's Uncle Peter and Auntie Nancy gave Lachlan a really cool birthday present, because they are generous people and I suspect Peter is really a big kid at heart. And as ever, it took me ages to remember to buy some batteries, because I am basically useless. In this instance, the present was an electric guitar and microphone which the kids are now thoroughly enjoying making a fine racket with. Thanks, Peter and Nancy!

Where we were!

As the highly intelligent superhumans who read this blog managed to work out from the somewhat obscure clue in the previous post, we were in The Hague (or Den Haag or even 's-Gravenhage) for the weekend visiting our friends Faye and Wessel. The really observant among you might even have guessed that the weather wasn't great - it rained buckets on Friday when we arrived and on Sunday with some decent enough weather on Saturday.
We had a good time anyway - Faye and Wessel were great hosts, and all the locals were friendly, spoke great English and didn't seem to mind that we hadn't a clue about their language and found it very funny that they have words like "slagroom" and "SpuiMarkt". I really like it when people live up to their national stereotypes and although we didn't see any herbal cigarettes or a surfeit of smutty DVDs we did see a lot of people on bikes including women getting sidesaddle backies on bikes and a couple riding on seperate vehicles but with arms around each others shoulders. Ahhhh.
Faye took us to see the Panorama Mesdag which is an amazing 360 degree picture which really gives a feeling of being in a different time and place.
On Saturday, we visited Escher in Het Paleis which I really enjoyed (although there were no lego models), had some lunch at Rootz which I would recommend if you're in the area and took a trip on the Tram to Delft which was lovely and where Wessel gave us an insight into his student days there and we stopped for a drink here.
On Sunday we went to the Mauritshuis to see the collection there. On the way, we saw a heron which a passing local told us was called Harry from The Hague. When he realised we were from Scotland, he told us he had been on a cruise through the Caledonian Canal and then round the Northern coast of Scotland and had thought it was a fantastic country. We had to agree with him.
Big thanks to Faye and Wessel for their hospitality. It was great to see you guys.

Where are we now?