Journeys and destinations...

  For the long Easter weekend, I was looking for a place in Netherlands to spend some time in nature, cycle around and look at spring flowers. Amsterdam and the surrounding areas are generally too crowded so I started looking at other places in Netherlands & found Texel! Texel is an island north of the mainland Netherlands. Why specifically Netherlands you might ask. Due to the pandemic, we had not travelled  outside Germany in the last 2 years and I was really missing the natural beauty of the Netherlands, the classic windmills, endless tulip farms and the tasty hot chocolate! The way to reach the island is with a ferry. Tickets can be booked online & the website has all the required information https://www.teso.nl/en/ .  The island is very popular with families with little kids. Somehow also very popular with families with dogs . Literally every family we saw had a dog. After a while my husband started missing having a dog 😄. The island has 7 little villages. The official we

The variety in flowers in nature always amazes me. Majority of the flowers in Germany were alien to me. Except roses, I guess roses can be found everywhere in the world.  This year due to travel restrictions and work-from-home, we explored Düsseldorf in spring like never before! Two more things helped. One we bought a car a couple of years ago & second I joined Instagram 😄. Up to last year we would visit a few parks in spring to admire the magnolias or the cherry blossoms but this year we planned special trips an hour away just to admire some specific flowers. The inspiration came from looking at photos on Instagram. Spring season here lasts from March to May. Every month nature (with the help of hardworking farmers & gardeners) creates displays of flowers of different colors, shapes and sizes. In this post, I am writing the timeline and places where we captured some gorgeous flowers. Every year timing of the bloom and location  could be a bit different . Hundreds of different