Beach

Zeeland has the best beaches in the whole of the Netherlands, at least I think so. We picked the week just before summer break starts, which means the beaches are almost empty. The B&B is just around the corner from the beach and the ladies who run it also have a small beach house which is available to use for their guests as well. Therefore we spend our first day laying and playing on the beach of Westkapelle. Only to move to the beach of Domburg at the end of the day for an evening stroll along the dunes, having dinner at  ‘het Badpaviljoen’ – the only place we have found so far that serves the ‘krukels’ (small sea snails) our eldest loves to eat – and ending the day with ice cream on the empty beach.

Warm Welcome

We’re staying a couple of days in our favorite Bed & Breakfast ever: Frankrijk Noord in Westkapelle. Arriving and finding homemade ice cold Elderflower Lemonade, we immediately feel at home again at Lille and Edith’s magnificent place.

Frankrijk Noord is situated in the barn of an old farm. Four beautifully renovated apartments and a huge common room, with a fully equipped kitchen, where a delicious breakfast is served every morning with among others fresh eggs from their own chickens. What is so perfect for our family is that there is a huge enclosed garden surrounding the farm, so both girls and the dog can run around freely.

Vegetable Garden

While my parents are on the other side of the world enjoying their annual stay in Australia, we are staying in their house in between Madrid and our mini-vacation in Zeeland. One of the best things about this is my mums fantastic fruit and vegetable garden. 

Today my mother-in-law, the other grandma, has come to help us berry picking. And there are a lot of berries to pick today, my mum even let some of the bushes uncovered for the birds to eat. The girls have divided task, one is picking, two are eating. I think I have never eaten gooseberries this sweet.

Afterwards there of course is flower picking

 

Garden

While we are having fun in Madrid the girls are having good times in grandma’s garden. Seeing them enjoying themselves so much in this beautiful purple and blue garden has made our wish to move to a house with a (communal) garden so much stronger.

Madrid

Our yearly weekend break without the kids. Last year we went to Rotterdam and had a great time (definitely going back someday), this year we are invited to a wedding in Madrid on the same day we have our own four year anniversary. Normally I’m eager to explore new things in a city, but this time we visit a lot of places we have been to three years ago. This time it is about being together - and about food of course.

Having Breakfast on the upper floor of crowded La Mallorquina in between elderly Spanish ladies and gents. Oyster and wine at Mercado de san Anton, Jamon and Cerveza at Mercado de san Miguel. Late night supper at the roof top terrace of Gau Café. – this was a new spot for me but more than worth visiting again someday overlooking the roofs of Madrid - Middle of the night cocktails on top of the Oskar. This all spread over two days of course. At the end of the second day we attended a real Spanish wedding starting in a little church in the hills at six pm, ending at a horse farm at 6 am. It took us about a week to recover but it was definitely worth it.

Philosophietje

Found these cute drawn girl on Instagram – She’s called Philosophietje - Made by @simon_wit – A really sweet lady - ‘happiness is here and now’ – ‘life is about learning’ – A small girls drawn around fruit and veg – I love it – Ordered some of her drawings – Send by @viamartine – Send in a beautiful package – Now Philosophietje is decorating our hallway – I love how Instagram works.

Claerchens

Just because we love this place some much, especially in summer times. Beer and Pizza’s. Everybody who visits Berlin should go to this adorable spot, we try to take everyone that visits here. Today is fathers day so we all go out for Pizza's and Beer. 

Meanwhile it has become my dad’s favorite place and he doesn’t visit without at least having a beer in Claerchens Garden.

Mozzarella Bar & Bottega

Two of my dearest girl friends came over for the weekend. Daddy took care of the girls for the whole weekend so I was able to spend all of my time chatting and eating with them. We did a whole lot of that these three days and I was able to visit a couple of the places on my list among which the small Mozzarella Bar on a corner in the Augusststrasse I’ve walked by many, many times these last months.

It is totally worth visiting, if not for their delicious mozzarella and antipasto platters, then for the cheerful waiters (or the fact that it’s Brad Pitts favorite Italian). It helped that the Dutch football team gloriously won a game the other night and these guys kept on congratulating us. But these mozzarellas of theirs are really something to come back to another time. We weren’t able to decide which one of the five different we liked the best. 

Berlin Zoo

We took Opoe to the Zoo today. An ideal place with enough to see but at least as important: enough benches to rest a bit and a nice place to stroll around a bit. What the girls liked the most? The playground and the petting zoo we went to at the end of the day. There we were allowed to touch and feed the animals.

Afterwards we went to Schleusenkrug in Tiergarten for some proper German schnitzels while the girls were producing some proper toddler art on the other side of the fence. We like this Biergarten very much because it combines German food very well with the alternative laidback Berlin style.

What impressed Opoe the most today? The size of the Sinas we ordered her

 

That window again

Waiting for Great Grandma. We call her Opoe and the girls adore her. They actually still have 3 great grandmas, but this is -with her 80 years- by far the youngest of the grannies and therefore the one we see the most: she is still able to handle the three of them. The girls can’t wait for her to arrive.

Groceries

Checking out this weeks' fruit and vegetables. They were very impressed by the artichokes, not sure they realized they are eatable.

Cooling Down in summertime

Berlin gets quite hot during the summer. Since we do not have a garden or balcony and our place gets really, really hot, we have made it our mission to find spots to cool down. One of our first city getaways was Wannsee. We went here quite often during fall and winter, so were curious if it would also be a great place to spent summer days. 

A bit surprised how amazingly busy it apparently is here on hot weekend days we decided to leave Strandbad Wannsee be – not the right place for energetic dogs. We walked a bit alongside the lake till we found a small beach that was still available and spend our day swimming and playing in the sand. Just a couple of meters away we later found a small green oasis with picnic benches and a sand pit for the children to play.

Even though we had the best day at the Wannsee we later found out that there are a lot of lakes surrounding Berlin where the water is much cleaner and brighter. For winter walks or spring picnics it is a perfect place, but summer days are better spend somewhere else.

Flowers

Just because it makes me so happy when she picks me flowers. Because I know they will not survive very long. I needed to make a picture of these beauties.

Saarbrücker Straße

The playground closest to our home is the one on Saarbrücker Straße. Even though it’s a very nice playground we don’t really often go there, only on my way back from groceries and when a bit in a hurry we sometimes go here for a little while when I think they haven’t been out enough. It’s a playground like there are so many in Berlin, or at least in the Eastern part of Berlin, on an open space on the corner of two streets. I always assume that there used to be houses on these places that have been destroyed somewhere in the rural history of Berlin. These playgrounds are mostly stuck between two blind walls, which seems to always inspire street artist to decorate them with some graffiti. Sometimes really amazing, mostly just a whole bunch of tags and letters. The big disadvantage and reason why we don’t often visit this playground is that the sun shines here only for a short time a day. We’ll probably be here more again once winter starts and all the other playgrounds are just a block too far away.

Window part IV

Here they are again. Just looking out of the window, seeing the people passing by on their bikes, in their cars, just waiting for the tram. Sometimes hoping to see daddy come home. Today it was just the three of them, yesterday joined by their big furry friend Sjakie the Weim who's always keeping track of their every movement.

The picture below made me realize that I do often tend to dress the twins similar to each other. They do not actually have exactly the same clothes, but often are dressed much alike. After realizing this and being aware of it made me think twice later on if I really want to do this. I decided to sometimes dress them a bit alike -just because it looks so cute- but to be more aware and definitely dress them in their separate ways.

Flammkuchen

Flammkuchen is a special German snack, which I must say until today I never had before. It actually is some kind of pizza, but than with a very thins and crispy crust. One of my favorite blogs about food and Berlin (and a lot of other stuff, but those of course have my main interest) kitchentablefood.com wrote about the flammkuchen and I immediately decided that this would be a perfect Sunday dinner for us because it would allow the girls to help me in the kitchen decorating the kuchen. 

Neurotic as I can be I of course had to make an exact copy of the one Kitchentablefood described with the mackerel and the zucchini, but besides this one we made three others topped with just about everything we were able to find in the fridge and cabinets. This is what makes it the perfect Sunday evening supper and we have made it a millions Sundays since this day.

For this super easy  recipe and lots of other good stuff please visit www.kitchentablefood.com

Schendelgasse

The playground at Schendelgasse is another of our favorite playgrounds. Not the playground itself it what attracts us that much –it probably is one of the least fancy playground in the area and could really use a bit of paint-, but the area around it that makes it a good place to spend out weekend in and around. It’s situated next to the Alte Schoenhauserallee and this gives us the opportunity to go out with the whole family, have breakfast together, let the girls entertain themselves and have mum and dad run errands in turns like going to the hair dresser, Flip Flop, &other stories or one of the other good places this street and the surrounding streets hold.

The best place for breakfast in the Alte Schoenhauser is definitely Zeit fur Brot. No weekend passes without us visiting this place for either a full breakfast including some yoghurt and sandwiches, just a cup of coffee or a cappuccino together with their ab-so-lute specialty (something you must absolutely try when in this area): their Zimtschnecken, which are the most fluffy cinnamon rolls I’ve ever tasted. Very sticky business, but so good. They also come with marzipan, white cholate or maple and walnut, but for me the original cinnamon ones are the very best.

And while we have our breakfast, coffee or snack, the girls are happy to entertain themselves on the swing, slides or in the huge sandpit.