Posts tonen met het label things i like. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label things i like. Alle posts tonen

zondag 21 maart 2010

A break at the beach

Hello everyone! Here I am again! I am trying to increase the amount of posts on this blog because I am trying to be a good blogger (lol) and having a short vacation really helps to do so. Let’s hope that I can keep it up, once I get back to work. But my time off has given me some ideas on topics to write about, so stay tuned for more random rambling by yours truly interesting stories from the life of Oxidaisy.

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A while ago I gave the Boyfriend a dinner in his favorite restaurant as a present for his birthday. Because it is an hour and half drive to the restaurant, it included spending the night there too. Me having a week off of work gave us the perfect opportunity to go!
Wednesday left for Scheveningen, happily escaping the horrible noise the construction workers have been making for the past two weeks in our building.

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Scheveningen is a village on the coast, right next to The Hague, an important city of the Netherlands.

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We checked into the B&B first. The hostess was a really nice, she actually drove with us to a free parking space (what? we are Dutch, we are cheap) that was a little hard to locate. Then she dropped us off at the beach. It felt so good to be at the beach again! We had a drink to celebrate our little trip.
The weather was good: kind of sunny and not so freaking cold anymore! I went for a nice walk on along the shore,  while the Boyfriend played with his kite.

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For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant. It is not cheap but the food is really really good. We sat together with some other people at a table. Each table has a baking tray and a cook comes and cooks your food – an 8 course menu – in front of you. It is really fun to look at the cook preparing dinner. They use all these spectacular tricks when cutting and seasoning the food and there is almost always at least one person who gets something that involves flaming the food.
And then there is the always fun part where they start throwing omelet at the guests: They use two spatulas to shoot a piece of omelet in a nice curve towards the guest who has to catch it in his or her mouth. If you fail, they try again. That is the easy part, but then….they pick one person at the table for the next phase: the cook launches the omelet parts in a straight line towards that one person. The parts go really fast so it is impossible to catch them in your mouth. And even if you would manage, you would probably choke in it, lol! And this time…I was the lucky person! Of course you try to catch them, but I ended up with egg on my cheeks and in my eyelashes, bahaha! You get laughed at by the whole table (including my oh so dear Boyfriend, but that is Japanese humor, so I did not mind and just laughed my ass off as well. All in all, we had a lot of fun and the food was very very good.

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We were pretty tired after spending the afternoon at the beach followed by 3 hours at the restaurant, so we walked back to our room and watched some TV before calling it a night. I don’t know about you, but I am often exhausted after days like this, so I tend to go to bed early. Boring huh? Haha.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast waiting for us. The hostess was not there and we had the whole house to ourselves. I woke up early, so I decided to go on a run and let the Boyfriend sleep in. I ran across the boulevard and ended up on the beach. Because the tide was low I decided to run along the shoreline. It was my first run ever on a beach! It was so lovely! The sun was shining, it wasn’t cold at all, the wind wasn’t very strong yet and the sound of the waves was really soothing. And the run really kick started my appetite.

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After breakfast we packed our stuff and then left for the beach again. First we did some windowshopping on the boulevard. They had a cute store with chinese stuff. Then we went back to the same bar/restaurant we were yesterday. I guess we really liked it!
We spent the first half of the afternoon there. They had fires lit outside and together with some sunshine it made a for a lovely lounging place on benches covered in pillows. We had lunch there and we read for a long while.

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Then we wanted to do something, so we went on the beach. The Boyfriend had some fun with his kite, though not too much because the wind was acting strange. I just hung around a bit, reading and watching the kite. A couple of hours later I was freezing, so went back for some hot tea by one of the fires inside. Man, that was cozy and hot!

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By the end of the afternoon we got our stuff and started on our trip back home. We had dinner at McD. I love healthy food, but once in a while it does feel good to eat fastfood! I wish we had more choices, like in th e US. In Holland we are stuck with McD, Burger King and a sporadic KFC.

So that’s it, folks! I am leaving you with a pic of some relaxing I did today, on my last day of vacation. After going for a run I finally took some time to lie down with a relaxing mask. I hope it won’t cause y’all bad dreams now…Bye!

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zondag 14 maart 2010

100 things I like

I think that we spend way too little time thinking about the things that we enjoy in life. I sure have those days that everything just seems so blah. That is why I made up a list of 100 things that make me happy. The list consists of simple everyday things that put a smile on my face.

  1. Sunshine
  2. Latin music
  3. Warmth
  4. Fireplaces
  5. Exercise
  6. Good food
  7. Cats, my cats in particular
  8. Sleep
  9. Dancing
  10. Toast with cheese
  11. Vivid dreams
  12. Reaching a goal
  13. Being well rested
  14. Hot chocolate after being in the cold
  15. Beaches
  16. English
  17. Water
  18. Reading a book
  19. Burritos
  20. A hot cup of tea
  21. Hugs
  22. Foot massages
  23. Doing something nice for someone else
  24. Being healthy
  25. Back massages
  26. The Boyfriend
  27. Spinach
  28. Picknicks
  29. Spinach
  30. Being with friends
  31. Driving a car
  32. Running
  33. Clean sheets on my bed
  34. Flowers
  35. An unexpected day off
  36. Spending the entire day in your pajamas
  37. Baking a cake
  38. Looking at the stars
  39. Watching mindless tv
  40. A kiss
  41. Surprises
  42. Painted fingernails
  43. Watching a movie
  44. Old jazz songs
  45. Good memories
  46. Slowdancing with my guy
  47. Lounging in my boyfriend’s sweater
  48. Making me look pretty
  49. Wine
  50. Trying new recipes
  51. Breakfasts
  52. Write
  53. Daydream
  54. Hammocks
  55. Spanish
  56. Old fashioned Jazz music, like from Ella Fitzgerald
  57. Chocolate
  58. Pretending I am really strong
  59. Reorganizing closets
  60. Going on a long bike ride
  61. Sweaty workouts
  62. Making lists
  63. Baking pies etc.
  64. Whirlpools
  65. Being outside
  66. Eating with chop sticks
  67. Seeing the positive side off everything
  68. Helping someone
  69. Listening to stories and life lessons of old people
  70. Treating myself to something small, like a specialty coffee.
  71. Receiving and sending personalized mail
  72. Doing research on something
  73. Sewing clothes
  74. Bright colors
  75. Book stores
  76. Words, especially idiomatic phrases and weird sayings
  77. Spending time with my family
  78. Shiny things
  79. Chicklits
  80. Watching the clouds
  81. Sitting in a tent when it rains
  82. Taking pictures
  83. Psychology
  84. Purple and blue
  85. Chatting with friends
  86. When I see that someone has actually read some of the blabbing I do on this blog
  87. Shopping
  88. Taking a shower
  89. Starting on a new, different bodylotion, shampoo or whatever
  90. Candles
  91. Cactus
  92. Wearing sunglasses
  93. German
  94. Wearing white clothes
  95. my car
  96. Doing things the old fashioned way, even when it takes more time
  97. Learning new life hacks that make my life easier or more efficient
  98. Putting on my favorite sweat pants after a long day at work
  99. Drinking green monsters
  100. Actually being able to think of 100 things I like without repeating myself (I hope).

Phew! That was hard! But it was fun to do! So what do you like? Let me know if you make a list!