Friday, June 4, 2010

10 year Anniversary: highlights







1st of June 2000 was the day Arthur and I fell in love! 10 years have passed since then, 10 years full of amazing highlights...We have travelled together to many beautiful places in the world, to 24 countries to be precise, have been living 7.5 years abroad now, got married, bought a 3000 m2 piece of land in the country side of Urla, Turkey and build a house, and are now parents of cute little girls Femke & Lente.

Portugal was our first destination together and a few years later we went back to celebrate our honeymoon there. We read an article about Lebanon as holiday destination and booked a flight, then 9/11 happened.. what to do? Cancel our flight? We thought hey it can´t be any safer than in the Middle East! Nice (France) & Monaco were weekend trips with cheap Easy jet flights. On a big sailing ship we sailed to a harbour in Denmark. As Belgium is close to The Netherlands we went there several times, to Antwerp and Brugge, but also to the coast. London is one of our favourite destinations, we never went there in Summer time though, only during Christmas and New Year. In Stockholm we visited my friend Frank and his wife Irina. Dublin was a surprise trip from Arthur, he proposed to me in a park, very romantic. 3 weeks we travelled by car through Cuba. Thailand was absolutely fantastic. NY was a place Arthur wanted to go to, but I hesitated for a long time, then said yes and was pleasantly surprised. Venice we went to by car with sister in law Pascalle and her boyfriend Michel. Arthur´s auditor job led us to many European cities like Oxford, Vastervik (Sweden), Zurich (and St Moritz! and Bern!), Paris, Barcelona, Stuttgart and Milan and Lake Maggiore. Then in January 2003 we moved to Turkey and travelled extensively in the country of my parents and forefathers... The charming islands of Greece and Athens were not far from Izmir so favourite destinations for us. Malaysia and Singapore we visited in December 2008. In Curacao we stayed 2 weeks with excellent hosts Jan & Ester. Before moving to Egypt in 2009 we spent a lovely time at Lake Como in Italy and Lugano in Switzerland. Our last big trips were to Sri Lanka and Dubai.

Our ambitions for the next 10 years?
Explore the Middle East & Africa a bit more now that we live so close. Travel to Canada and check out possible areas to live. Perhaps move back to Amsterdam for a few years. Sailing lessons and hopefully within 10 years own a sailing boat.