I feel like I've been away forever, but you probably didn't really notice since I had some preplanned posts about my weekend getaway to Schiermonnikoog for you while I was on vacation. I hope you enjoyed those.
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| Street where I stayed under an impressive sky. |
My, if you look at my blog right now you might think I do nothing but go on trips and vacations all the time. You'd be wrong of course, but I must warn you that after all my posts about my weekend getaway we are moving right into another series of slideshows, since we all know how I love to share my trips with you. So, if that's not your thing, please be patient with me and let me get it out of my system, okay? The artsy stuff will return, I promise.
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| Breakfast nook. I love how cosy it is. |
So, I went to Zelhem. It's where my older sister lives since past spring. It's a town not very far from where she used to live, but still in a slightly different part of the municipality called Bronckhorst, where I've vacationed every year for the past few years. It's in a region called Achterhoek which again is part of the province of Gelderland, which is in the east of the Netherlands.
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| Kitchen deluxe! |
This also happens to be the region that I originally come from and that always makes me feel a little homesick when I'm there. Hmmm, is it possible to be homesick for a place where you are actually staying? What I mean is that it's always like coming home a little, but a home I no longer live in. The landscape is so familiar to me, even when I visit specific places I've never been before. It must be in my blood somehow.
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| Living room area. The painting on the right wall was my gift for their new home. |
So whenever I'm there I have this longing to move there, and why not? It's a beautiful region as you will see in my slideshows. It's full of farmland, green pastures, castles and beautiful old towns. It is everything that my island is not and I don't mean that in a bad way. My island is breathtaking, but all the things that I love about the Achterhoek are simply not available here. The same is true for the opposite. No ocean, no beach, no seabirds, no sailships, no everlasting wind can be found in the place I come from. What can you do? I'm hooked on both, so I'll have to just go back and forth on a regular basis.
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| This pic gives a bit of an idea of the vastness of the place. But only a bit. |
As I've said before I got to stay in my sister's house and that was absolutely wonderful. Like vacationing in the lap of luxury. She has a patiohome, which means the entire house is built around a square and lovely patio. It's also about twice as big as my house and that led to really strange things like when you forgot something in one room you had to walk really far to retrieve it. It made me wonder how people with really big homes (you know, like moviestars have) do that. ;-)
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| The cute patio. |
In this post you can see some pics of the street and the house I stayed in. My sister gave me kind permission to put these on my blog so you can see that my vacation was spent in a five star accommodation.
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| My makeshift studio on the dining table. The little book with orange cover was my travel journal. Yes, you will get a peek. |
The next four posts will be one long slideshow from my trip and I hope you will enjoy it.
I have been back to work again this past week, so I'm looking forward to a few days off on my own island and getting fully reacquainted after all this time away.
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| A park near sister's house is home to a flock of sheep! |
For now I wish you all a wonderful and artsy weekend.