Illegal aliens

Saturday then....drove from the north of the Netherlands down to the south to Marianne's home town Kerkrade. Convoy did not last but we had given Molly to Mariannes folks, luckily she speaks Dutch...Jess went in their car with Eric and it was agreed that we would meet for lunch. We should have known from past experience that this would not happen. When we called and asked Jess where they were she told us the road she was on...Marianne was confused so we consulted the map and discovered that they were in Germany....sans passports...OOPS. Jess was not as surprising in her reaction this time, she was livid. They ended up arriving an hour and a half after us after truning poor Molly off and getting lost. My daughter was NOT impressed. The good news is that while she was tearing her hair out we were enjoying a traditional lunch, I got to try krokets, something a friend had suggested I taste (nice but rich, not sure I would eat it again) and Marianne ordered Frikkadel Special which I tasted too. Kirstin also decided to try a traditional meal and had pasteijie (spelling?) with chicken and mushrooms covered in cheese sauce. She absolutely loved every mouthful. She tried the frikkadel and kroket too, adventurous palette, made me so proud!!!
On Saturday evening we went to marianne's sister for her birthday and I got to try the apple pie thaat the region is famous for. I also tasted a cake made with rice pudding type filling, will have to find out what it was called and a yoghurt apple cake - all of it was good.
We went back to the hotel put the kids to bed, left Jess and Kirstin in charge for a couple of hours and headed off to see the night life of Kerkrade. Mmmmmmmm, sadly there was none, we had a drink in a very quiet pub, but Marianne knew the owner so it was worth it for her to have a chat and after that we headed towards the market square...it was actually eerily quiet, nobody walking the streets and a handful of people in the pubs, at least we did not have to wait too long for our drinks!!! We managed to stay out until midnight so that we could see Marianne's birthday in and then headed back to the hotel, I think we would have had a better party with more people if we had just stayed in our hotel room with the kids!!!