Family time with twisted ending

weekend in Dusseldorf 21-24th September posted by LP

We knew after almost 5 months here, Joe and I will be craving for some family contact, so we in July we booked tickets to visit Joe’s uncle’s family in Dusseldorf, Germany. We’ve been to visit them twice during our prior European trip, so have done most of the touristy things already. We wanted to spend time with the family and relax, and that we did. We arrived around 9.30pm on Friday night, stayed up and chatted with the family. The boys (Hoang and Nhan) have grown so much and are so tall!!! I don’t remember the house being so spacious, but I guess living in a small unit in London, it is very big comparative!

Saturday morning, we went out for breakfast and being the glorious day it was Joe, his uncle and the boys played a game of tennis, whilst Joe’s aunt and I watched and chatted. After the match, we dropped into our favourite ice-cream store and I waited eagerly for my Eidbere (strawberry) ice cream, it was still as good as I remembered it!!

We all then packed into Joe’s uncle brand new car (he just picked it up the day before we arrived) and drove to Venlo, a Netherland town on the border of Germany, it was only 35km away!! We spent the afternoon there, and then headed back to Germany. After dinner, the boys performed on the piano and cello, they are both so talented! Hoang plays so much better than me!! His sight reading is fantastic, and Nhan is brilliant on the cello as well… I had to get and play the 1 song I could remember from memory… I do miss my piano.. I think I will buy a keyboard to play whilst I am in London.

Sunday was relaxing, the highlight was when the boys, Joe and I took cycled to the ice-cream store again, the bike lanes are next to the pedestrian’s and quite wide, so you can safely cycle. The streets were lined with rows of maple trees with leaves the colour of bright yellow, red and green… as we cycled along the street, the sunrays warmed our skin, and as the leaves fall from the gentle wind it was breathtaking..

Our trip was coming to an end, but we weren’t as sad as we knew we are only an hour flight away. We prepared to leave and whilst on the way to the airport, through miscommunication, we were going to the wrong airport and had to travel another 70km to get to the right one in 35mins… well Joe uncle tried his best (and driving us at 150km/h) we thought we’d just made it before check in closed, but the staff would not check us in. Trying to negotiate with them is impossible, and we accepted defeat and tried to find another flight without success. We then booked the first flight out on Monday morning and went straight into work. Anyone who knows me would know I hate things not going to plan, so I was a nervous wreck. The good thing was we got to spend another night with Joe’s family!