Day Twenty-Six: My Pre-Birthday Party

Well, since Rob and I are headed to Oxford this weekend for Brendan and Judith's Wedding Reception thing, we won't be in Holland for my birthday. That's right, I'm turning 24 tomorrow. I think flying to England is a pretty cool birthday present as it is, but it was nice to celebrate it with Jos, Anne, and Hugo. And Rob, too.

We went out for dinner to this Thai buffet called Golden Dynasty. This was, of course, after I spent the afternoon shopping for a dress for this weekend. Anyway, Hugo, Jos, Anne and I headed to the restaurant for about 7:00pm where Rob met up with us. The buffet was pretty good; nice variety of cold salads, fruit, hot rice and noodles, soups, and meats. they even had wontons for you to put in your soup! I love wontons!

After dinner we went back home and Rob (almost) surprised me with a home baked cheesecake. He made the crust out of speculaas (a kind of Dutch cookie, pictured below), which is totally one of my favourites, and did a citrus cheese cake filling with fresh strawberries on top. SO TASTY. Rob must really love me or something to have attempted something that had the potential to go so terribly wrong.
Speculaas:


I also got some super cute gifts. Rob got me Eric, the Polar bear from the Rotterdam Zoo, in fluffy stuffed puppet form. Jos and Anne gave me a similar white tiger, and Anne made me a beautiful hand made birthday card. Hugo gave me Delft-themed dish/hand towels and a set of glass coaster with klompen on them. Overall, a fabulous evening... resulting in a food baby. SO FULL! I would totally go back to the Golden Dynasty. Maybe this time with some stretchy pants so as to reach my full stuffing potential.

Also, I finished off an illustration which I'll post up here for people to see:



Tonight Rob and I fly off to England and I'm not bringing my computer with me, so there may not be a new post until Monday when we're back. Here's hoping for an awesome time! And, like Rob said, at least in England everyone speaks English!