the beauty of NL

back again after a week of stress & sickness :S

stress because i had to prepare for the practice weekend for my travelguide course...
even more stress because i became sick at the same time...damn flu!
anyway...the practice weekend turned out fine (of course)...it had it's ups & downs...but most of all we, my fellow travelguides-to-be & me, learned quite a lot

from it and that's what it was all about of course.
when saying goodbye to our guests on sunday it felt like we'd been together for much longer than just 2 days and we were thanked with lots of smiles and compliments by everyone :)

so what did we do in our practice weekend you might wonder?
well let me tell you...
arrival of our guests at the bus

we all met in utrecht on saturday morning, where we we guided through the city by bart, marije & christel from our group.
the domtower
one of the canals
bart had lots to tell about the history of utrecht

i'd been in utrecht quite some times before, was almost born there if my parents hadn't moved to alkmaar a month before my birth, and i have to say i love the city more & more each time i'm there.

after lunch in utrecht we headed for our next stop during the day, the beautiful historical city doesburg. nick and yolande did the city tour here and jos organised a visit in the mustard museum in doesburg...interesting...but the smell! :P
nick in doesburg

after doesburg it was my turn... my job was to tell people all about the village of vorden and it's castles. there's 9 castles around the village! thanks to our driver jasper my story turned out pretty well as i could tell a bit about the history of some castles and point out the castles as well as we slowly drove past them. we also had a little photo-stop at castle vorden just outside the village.

when my job was done margerita took over to tell people all about our arrival in deventer and the hotel we were gonna stay in. the hotel was simply beautiful and when everyone had gotten their keys & disappeared into their rooms it was time for us to evaluate the day with emile (who was teaching the course), miriam and margriet (from SRC).... it wasn't all perfect, but like i said...we learned a lot!

we had dinner with everyone in a restaurant very close to our hotel...it was mjammy!:P
i didn't plan to, because i still didn't feel 100%, but i did end up in the hotelbar with my classmates, emile, jasper and some guests...didn't drink much but it was a lot of fun!

gaby, marije & me...the girlies from our class!
emile in front of restaurant maslow, who we know from lots of the theory we learned during our course

after a short night (because of the hotelbar & start of summertime) and breakfast at the hotel it was time to leave the hotel for our city tour in deventer by marije & yolande...just as utrecht and doesburg this was also a wonderful city to visit!

funny dentist sign
you see we have hills! at least here in deventer there's one...

we took the ferry to the other side of the river and to our bus and then headed to paleis het loo (= royal palace where lots of royals have lived up to wilhelmina, grandmother of queen beatrix) in apeldoorn where i was one of the people organising a 'guided' tour through the palace.

paleis het loo, from the garden

as we weren't allowed to do a guided tour we did a 'guided tour' with handouts and
we walked along with the groups through different parts of the palace trying to tell them a bit about the rooms anyway.
the weather was perfect, THE SUN CAME OUT!!! so after the tour everyone enjoyed the sun in the beautiful palace garden :D

after this it was time to head back to utrecht again...jos told us some interesting stuff about what we saw along the road on our way back...and as i said at the beginning...our goodbye to the guests was great, there were lots of handshakes and thank you's! we then evaluated the 2nd day as well and got our certificates!!!

my certificate!

to end the weekend and our course we went out for pizza with all travelguides-to-be, except for gaby who had to leave the night before already, it was a perfect and happy ending after these 3 months together in class and during this weekend...i'm gonna miss them for sure!!!

jos, margerita, christel, marije, bart, nick, yolande & me

for more pix: http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i231/SRC-Sarah/praktijkweekend/