We go Shopping.

Mr Tabubil and I have just returned from three weeks holiday – a week in Holland, so that I might see a bit of his country and meet his family, and two weeks together after that in Italy.  Right now, we're in back in Holland.

They day after our boat trip we flew back to Holland - out of a cozy little airport called Treviso about 40 minutes by express bus from Venice.* The airport is small and charmingly built, but the staff there wrapped up every single stereotype you have ever heard about the Italian civil service and tied it with a ribbon.  I’ve never been so glad to get onto a budget holiday airliner in my life.

            We had saved the last treat of our holiday for the every end of it.  Back in Leidschendam we went grocery shopping. We’d brought an extra suitcase along with us to Europe, and on our last day in Holland we stuffed it with Dutch licorice and Dutch chocolate sprinkles and aniseed powder and jam and cookies and blended spice mixes and breakfast cereal (it’s called Brinta, and it looks, tastes and smells like home-made papier-mâché, and don’t ASK what the leftovers do to steel spoons, but Mr Tabubil grew up on the stuff, and I gave up commenting years ago) - exactly 23 extra kilos of comestible stuff.

            At the airport, we discovered that we’d forgotten to pack the curried ketchup. But with two kilos of salty Dutch licorice in our hand luggage to sustain us, we weren’t exactly hurting.

We flew home.

*That day we traveled by foot, by boat, by bus, by plane, by train, and by automobile.  Mr Tabubil was openly regretful that he hadn’t found a way to fit a hydrofoil and donkey-cart into the list.