Poffertjes Lekker

This is yet another long weekend. The Dutch celebrates two days (on Sunday and the subsequent Monday) of what they called Pinksteren day, a Christian feast, which falls 49 days or 7 weeks after Easter Sunday or the tenth day after Ascension. In UK it is called Whit Sunday. In any case for most people it’s an excellent excuse to have an early break when the weather is always great in mid spring. The next public holiday is a long way to go – Christmas.

Yesterday we went to town. What we like about the city centre, for a city with half a million people, is there are not that many cars on the road and to reach the city centre is like a breeze. The reason is most people come on their bike. It only takes a maximum of 30 minutes from any part of The Hague to cycle to the city. And there in the city centre you can see the evidence – thousands of bikes parked everywhere and at any available poles that people could secure their bikes.

We took the time to rest at a coffee shop and eat poffertjes. It’s a traditional Dutch treat that looks like tiny pancakes. They are served with powdered sugar and butter to make them tasty. Lekker! which is a Dutch word for nyaman. This plate costs 8 Euros.

On a different subject, it’s the wedding season back home. While here we have missed out on a number our relatives’ and cousins’ weddings. Looking at the photos (there so many wedding blogs nowadays), their weddings looked quite grand. Gone are the weddings that used to have invitations of up to 2000 people. Nowadays weddings are more for close relatives and friends. Attentions to details, comfort, entertainments, significant of the day are more the order of the day. Gone are the weddings where people just come to eat, shake hand, give the white envelope and gone without even seeing the bersanding ceremony (or to know who is actually marrying). So places like JP and Rizqun seems to be popular and fits the occasion, otherwise specialized large tents are being used if the wedding is held at home. We wish all the newly weds everlasting happiness – Adey+hubby, Saiful+Abby, Khairul+Liza.