A Productive Saturday - Passport Photos & Cheap Tapas

April's weather

In Holland we always say "April doet wat hij wil" which means April will do what it wants in terms of weather. I think in English the saying is more like "If April brings showers bring May flowers" or something like it.

Last weeks, including March, have been full of rain and grey skies. Don't be fooled by the grey and cloudy weather prediction though, I got fooled almost every single day by giving my kid a tad too warm clothes (thankfully for her, we do layers, lol) and I think it's really time to remove the long leggings and thicker material from the wardrobe and move them out of sight.

Passport photos

I've been wanting to go to the photographer with my daughter for a month now, getting the passport pictures out of the way so I can truly say, I have all the documents ready and don't have to stress about forgetting anything. Imagine travelling there and then forgetting such an important part. In Madrid, the photographer that knows the Dutch passport rules charges 12 euros for 2 (!!) pictures. I paid 6,50 for 4 passport pictures and one bigger sized one.

To make sure they are within the Dutch rules, I made a document with the rules from the embassy website, and copy pasted all relating information about ears and face etc into that document, hit the print button and took it with me. The lady already wanted to decline when I said for a Dutch passport, so cheers to me being pro active and thinking ahead, lol. She didn't have time to browse the web as she was busy as can be and almost closing..

So hot outside!

My daughter wanted to wear her new dress which we gave her last week and I really thought it would be at least a few more weeks until she was going to be able to wear it. Today I told her wear it, and gave her a legging under the dress as it looked so cloudy and I thought with some wind (we live at the coast after all) she will do a Marilyn Monroe and/or maybe feel cold..

Summer jacket added, I personally wore my new summer pants I bought last week, which is a perfect fit and so light, so happy with it.. I also wore a vest, BIG mistake! We had no time to turn around and ditch the extra clothes as we had to walk in a pretty fast pace to make it before closure today so we just put them in a bag. It was clearly around 28 degrees today.

Back home

We were so thirsty and immediately changed our sneakers for summer shoes, sandals it is! I quickly grabbed my sunglasses as my boyfriend just finished his weekly management meeting and we were on the hunt to have a quick lunch somewhere near.

What a surprise!

We ended up finding a table at a really Spanish tapas bar where we never sat before, so it was a surprise if we'd like it but it was very cosy and they had airco inside, win!

Initially, we were going to go for the Cazon, which is dogfish in English. My boyfriend tried it at some other place once, and it's actually a really soft taste so when we see it on a menu somewhere, we try it sometimes as every place has their own way of prepping the tapas.

The menu

And then the guy handed the menu where we could see some more tapas and I noticed there were frikandellen and bitterballen, haha. Omg, we just landed on another local place with our beloved Dutch snacks! And to be completely fair, one of the others has my preference when we want to sit outside, but this one already won my preference today for the inside moments as they had their airco on already. We almost sat down at another place but after 1 minute of feeling boiled inside, we quickly went walking again to land here for the first time.

Frikandellen with the best curry sauce from Hela

We were surprised to not only find frikandellen on the menu, but even better: the Hela curry which is super expensive (even in Holland) was the sauce they serve it with. They are also a bit cheaper than the other place and with the place having way more ambience it's a win for me!

The bitterballen could have been a bit more crunchy but they were original bitterballen, so once again, good!

I forgot to take a picture of the hamburger tapa, it didn't look good honestly but the taste was great. We forgot to take the picture before trying a bite.

Tapas included

Also good to find out was that with a beer, the tapas were included so we felt like being in Granada for a bit again. Normally, you pay extra here. It only goes for my boyfriend, these included tapas because we just order a big bottle of water and pay for the tapas. I'm not going to get drunk because of free food, and then there's the fact that I don't drink beer and only like a few alcoholic beverages. Water it is for me!

Needed some groceries too

It was a very affordable place and we really enjoyed the Spanish chatter around us. It's always good to be out and about for a bit, afterwards we walked home to get some grocery bags and went to a few supermarkets for the weekend groceries. I won't mind when all these supermarkets are open 7 days a week again, as it's always so crowded on these Saturdays now that they are closed on Sunday. I kind of like the few months that they are open all days of the week.

Anyway, pictures in the pocket, a few hours of chatter and eating in good company, while also having a good round of groceries afterwards. Now it's time to hit the bed because in the morning we're having our monthly flea market stroll.

On the hunt for hidden gems we shall!

Good night!

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Pictures above are all mine...

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