Hakuna Matata

Hakuna Matata means no worries, and in Zanzibar they use this and Jambo! (hello) every time you meet someone. We didn’t have much worries this summer, except for Rob’s mum’s health - to be explained later.

Our Lord gave us feet, not roots, and we definitely used our feet to travel and see some amazing parts of the world. We traveled the world, from Austria to Canada and Croatia to Zanzibar. It was just an amazing summer, but, to be honest, I’m also glad to be back home in London, on my own sofa and in my own bed.

I’m not going to tell about our adventures chronically, but I’ll start with the last event first.

Hakuna Matata!

The wedding of Anastasiya and Patrick took place in Zanzibar. Patrick, who we call Junior, was our neighbour and dear friend in Lagos, where he still lives. 'Nastya' is his wife from Azerbaijan, where we were in May for his 50th birthday.

We were invited to the party from September 21st till Sunday 24th. We decided to arrive the day before. It turned out that a few of the other guests had the same plan.

Sanneke, our sister-in-law, was the wedding photographer and we were travelling together.

We slept at the Hilton at Schiphol Airport because we flew very early on Wednesday. I’ll spare you all the details of all the films we watched on-board. We arrived safe and sound at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport of Zanzibar. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn't expect a bright, new, clean, and well-organized airport. Nigeria is still fresh in our minds, but Zanzibar's was totally the opposite. We had to go through customs, which took a bit, but I won’t complain as the lines at Schiphol Airport are nowadays long too. Outside we needed to find our taxi driver. It was a bit of a puzzle, but we managed to find Ali our driver. It took 1.5 hours to get to “The View Of Zanzibar”. A big surprise was that they drive on the 'wrong' side of the road. They were a British colony just like Nigeria. Nigeria kept the English language, but drives like all European countries on the right side of the road. In Tanzania and Zanzibar, however, they speak Swahili, but still drive on the left side of the road. Interesting, right?

We had a warm welcome from the owner of the hotel - Joop van der Vinne and his Nigerian wife Yudee. Afterwards, we were of course also welcomed by the happy couple; the master of ceremony, Sil, and Dana; and the Lankau family who were already a week in Tanzania for several safaries. Elina, Marya, and Rustam, the mother, friend, and son of Nastyia were also present. It all felt like a warm bath. Joop has built a hotel at the beach and made it from old boats, so-called Dow's. It's spacious, beautiful, bright, and clean, a real recommendation, a true paradise with turquoise sea and bright white beaches. Check it out on: #theviewofzanzibar

The next morning around 6am I woke up to have a peak at the view, it was breathtaking beautiful. We were right at the beach; you could hear the waves. There was a restaurant opposite the hotel, named the Rock. It's on a tiny island, basically a rock, that's why they named it this way. It’s one of the best sea food restaurants of Zanzibar. In every lonely planet and trip advisor it’s mentioned as the place to visit.

Zanzibar is an island in the Indian Ocean and when we were staying on the east side we got to see the tides which were massive. During a few hours the waves were rolling almost against the hotel with high tide and hours later you can walk hundreds of meters towards the Indian Ocean with low tide. The sand was never too hot to walk on, it's very fine crushed shells and had a firm consistency. Some of the locals even cycled on the beach. It was fun to walk in the ocean with low tide and everywhere you looked you saw the Maasai tribe, in their typical outfits, long people, with a wooden stick in their hands, beads around their ankles and wrists.

Thursday night was dinner planned at the Rock, #therockrestaurantzanzibar. We could just manage to get through the water as high tide was coming. Not all the wedding guests were present yet, we all flew in from all kinds of directions. We were with 24 people in total, but at the Rock I think we were still 6 people short. The food looked amazing for the ones who love sea food like lobster, squid, oysters, calamari and more of these creatures that live in the ocean. Not Rob or my cup of tea to be honest. So, we drank wine and ate bread and ate a few skewers of meat and enjoyed the good company we were in. To go back to the hotel, we had to use a little boat, the tide was too high to walk now. Next morning, we went snorkeling with a few people. The skipper of the boat threw bread in the sea and 'all' the fish came to the surface. You then could swim around them. Some were bright yellow, some had zebra stripes, it was wonderful to see and do this. My 'delicate' ears won’t allow me to go in with them, so I was there to make some photos as Sanneke was busy with Nastyia.

In the afternoon, we held a nice siesta (i.e. afternoon nap). Friday, we did the snorkeling and we went sailing in these local catamarans in the afternoon. The very primitive way, but believe me if I tell you that this works. Lesson learned, you don’t need all these modern fancy stuff. It works the way they do it. I enjoyed every minute of it. I think we were out on the ocean with 6 boats.

We were going to a beach club, but missed it, and went too far. Which gave us extra time on these boats, hurray! At the beach club, we had 'sex on the beach' cocktails, beers, and photos of the whole group, and we saw a stunning sunset! We went back by bus since at 6:15pm the sun sets and then it’s dark, really dark. Back at the View of Zanzibar, we had a Nigerian dinner and the 90ties party started where everyone was dressed up in fancy dresses.

Dana and I did a small speech plus 'the shoe game', to see how well Nastya and Junior know each other. Their score was 6/12, not too bad though but they have all the time in the world to improve this. We’ll do it again when they have their 12.5 years of wedding anniversary.

The Lankau’s, team Thonen and Kleinjan’s gave a gift to N&P, a canvas with their photo and signed by all the wedding guests as a guestbook.

At a certain moment, I saw Junior and Rustam (the son of Nastya) disappearing, but had no idea what was going on. It was so hilarious, Junior came back as Crocodile Dundee. Apparently, Nastya and Elina (her mother) had said that Junior looks like Crocodile Dundee when they met for the first in the Maldives. For his surprise, he was wearing cowboy boots, lederhose and a cowboy hat, it was brilliant and then he started to sing Sweet Child O’Mine from Guns N’Roses! It was awesome! He sang two songs. This is Junior/Patrick the entertainer.

We danced the night away in the sand on one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Around midnight we called to Zoeterwoude where Noa lives. She turned 27 on Saturday, the 23rd. She saw a whole bunch of crazy dressed people dancing. The funny thing was that there was no sound and we didn't realise.

The next day was 'Wedding Day' day! In the morning, Rob and Dennis quickly went for a massage at Rose on the beach. We hung around the hotel, stayed close. Dana and Thil helped me with my hair as the hairdresser didn’t show up. It’s still Africa there and so you must be flexible! We saw the Maasai slowly building the arch of flowers, putting chairs on the beach, and brought out a party table for Mathilde who had the honours to wed the couple. The sun was out, wind was a bit too strong, everyone was cheerful, and in a happy and exciting mood. Moment supreme was there. I had the honour to walk our ‘adopted’ son down the aisle. We were all emotional. Nastyia came from the penthouse and had to walk down two stairs on the outside of the building. Her son, Rustam, was waiting downstairs for her and together they walked through the aisle. Mathilde spoke beautifully with the help of Dennis who held the microphone and tried to block the wind from the microphone with his hand. Then they gave each other their vows. Nastya did it perfectly. Patrick did it his way, at the end of his vows he sang, “realize, you’re living the golden hour”, the text we used on the canvas we gave them the evening before. Then Joop organized a surprise at the end of all the official parts, a group of Maasai came to dance. Uncle Nico and Antonello danced and jumped with them. Sanneke sort of danced around everyone to make the perfect shots. I think it’s a stressful job as it all goes so fast. After the ceremony, I assisted her with light on the beach. It was fun and I did my upmost best. After the ceremony, the happy couple took photos on the beach. We had a few drinks at the front side of the hotel. During dinner, Rob and Joop gave beautiful speeches. Nastya and Junior cut a stunning cake. In the evening, we danced the night away in the sand.

After all these festivities, we changed location on Sunday. Rob and I went to the other side of the island to an all-inclusive resort, the Royal Zanzibar Beach Resort.#theroyalzanzibarbeachresort

I’ll keep it short, this was how our days looked like:

Waking up-breakfast-to the pool-looking for a sunbed-pool-sunbed-pool-sunbed-stroll on the beach-lunch-repeat the morning routine-back to the hotel room-evening dinner-bed.

Rob worked one day from 10am to 7pm. Wednesday, we did the spice tour, which was amazing. Afterwards, we went to Stone Town. Unfortunately, we had a tour guide who was a bit too enthusiastic about all the historical years. After 5 minutes, I was already lost! But he was kind and did his best. We learned that Freddie Mercury was born in Stone Town, a big surprise for me to be honest. He has no Zanzibar’s blood, his dad worked for the British government and so it happened that Freddie was born in Stone Town.

The day we were in Stone Town, we received bad news from Rotterdam. Opa Piet called Hugo, Caroline was abroad for work, so he called Hugo, oma Willy fell again and they were on their way to the hospital. This was her second hip fracture in 10 weeks. Jack dropped all his work and drove to the hospital to be with them. She had to wait 48 hours before they did surgery. It took too long before she came back to her ward. Her oxygen level was too low, they suspected pneumonia.

After a few days, days in which she didn't recover, we learned that she has incurable colon cancer. We are devastated by this news, we will try to be with her as often as we can. She's now nearby their house in a hospice.

We not only went to Zanzibar, I also went sailing in Croatia with Robin and Armin. The crew were five women and Armin. Aside from myself, these five years included my sister in-law, Sanneke, my niece, Joe, and, Robin’s best friend, Lianne from Robin's childhood years in Zoeterwoude. One night, we were in a marina next to an Austrian boat and so Armin and the men from this other ship were chatting. One of the guys was looking at all of us and Armin explained who who was, this is my mother-in-law, this is my girlfriend this is her niece and this is her aunt and her best friend. ‘Wow’, said the man, ‘you should not make a mistake tonight!’ 😂

We had sunny weather, 30 degrees Celsius, but not always a good wind though. It was wonderful to see Robin and Armin working and steering the boat as a well-oiled team. Rob wasn’t there, he doesn’t have a lot of holiday days.

Before Croatia, the weekend of September 2nd, we went to see Paula and Tony Florey, our friends from Germany years. Also, Rachel and Ian Bray, and Helen Hughes were there. Tony and Paula live in a village near Oxford. Tony picked us up from the train station. We had some snacks in their beautiful home before we jumped on the bus to Abingdon-on-Thames. A historic market town set in rural Oxfordshire next to the Thames and near to Oxford. We had a small walk and a few drinks and then we went for an Indian. With the bus, we travelled back to Tony and Paula’s house and ended the day with a few more drinks.

On 18th of August, we flew to Canada together. We flew to Toronto, rented a car, and drove near the Niagara Falls. The next morning, we drove to the Falls. It was spectacular, but the little town at Niagara Falls was one big fun fair, not our cup of tea. After the Niagara Falls, we drove to Niagara-on-the-lake where we met our American friends Wayne and Maureen from our Belgium years. They live near Niagara Falls in Rochester, US. It was wonderful to spend the day with them.

From Niagara-on-the-Lake, we went to Quebec. This is by far our favourite city we’ve been to in the world. It’s cute, it has a Charles Dickens feel to it. Unfortunately, Rob was stung by a bee. The good thing about it was that he needed to sit down, and decided to do this in a jewellery shop of all places. So, he got the pain, and I got a beautiful gift for our 33rd wedding anniversary, a bracelet and matching earrings. After an hour, it became a big blister. We bought a cream at the pharmacy and he was good to move on.

From Quebec, we drove to Montreal. It was a scenic route and we stopped at Trois-Rivières. Montreal is a beautiful city, but we compared it the whole time with Quebec, and Quebec definitely wins.

We drove back to Quebec again and needed to hand in the rental car, so we had to fill it up with petrol, which was a real challenge. At the first petrol station, two different credits cards were not accepted. After trying and trying, an employee of the petrol station came to inform us that none of the machines worked. There was a power cut! We drove to the next petrol station and here it was same story, a black out. At the third station, we were lucky and filled up the car and handed it in at the rental station. We were at Quebec Airport to fly to Toronto. We had maybe 45 minutes to drink and eat something, but the airport also had a problem with the same black out, all the restaurants were closed unless you could pay cash and wanted to eat cold food. We didn’t have any cash with us, so no food or drinks for us. We flew around 8pm. And then there was a huge storm. The captain explained that he tried to fly around it, and if it stayed bad he had to divert to Ottawa. Luckily, this didn’t happen, we landed safe and sound in Toronto.

The next day, we explored Toronto with the famous CN tower, St Lawrence Market, and Little Italy. In the evening, we saw Mariola Mikus, we go many years back, Poland years. She lives near Toronto, but came into the city for us. She choose a wonderful Italian restaurant, and old court house, called Terroni. We can recommend it to everyone. #terroni

From Toronto, we flew back to London with many memorable memories and a jet lag.

Edinburgh Festival is a yearly event in August and this year we went for it. We walked around, the city has a great vibe and we ate something at a lovely restaurant called Mowgly and then it started to rain cats and dogs. Of course, we were prepared with rain coats, but this is not what we wanted, looking at the show in the rain. At one of the many tourists shops, we decided to buy a tea towel at least to dry our seats, not getting a wet cold butt. But miraculously it stopped raining 15 minutes prior to the show.

The Tattoo Arena is the spectacular home of the world-famous Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. The history behind this festival began seven decades ago. It was inspired by a simple show called “Something about a Soldier” performed in 1949 at the Ross Bandstand in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens. The performance was produced by Lieutenant Colonel George Malcolm of Poltalloch. The same year, lieutenant Colonel Malcolm also produced "the King’s Men" on the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade for a standing audience of 2,500. Following these two productions, the new Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir Andrew Murray extended an invite to the General Officer Commanding the Army in Scotland. Asking him to present a military ‘show’ to be called the Edinburgh Tattoo. Informally, it was agreed that this would take place annually during the Edinburgh International Festival. This year’s performance included countries from Trinidad and Tobago to Norway and United States to (of course) the UK.

It was an amazing show, not one minute was boring. Next year, again!

If you're thinking where's Ayo in all of these amazing trips, well, clearly not with us. He's the most photographed dog, you would have seen photos of him. No, he stayed all summer long in Zoeterwoude with the children and Zara, Jack and Ailsa's dog. We are grateful that they took good care of him. We missed him a lot and are happy he's back with us on England's soil.

I will rest my pen and will fill the blog with some amazing photos.

#staysafe #Toronto #AbingdononThames #Quebec #Montreal

#Edingburghtattoo #sailingincroatia #weddinginzanzibar #theroyalzanzibarbeachresort

#theviewofzanzibar #Lagosfriendship #Canada #Tanzania #familyworries #oxfordshire #Munichfriendship #Niagarafalls #traveltheworld #sailing #Nigaraonthelake #vinyardsniagaraonthelake #terroninitalienrestauranttoronto