Friday 26 February, visiting Emsflower on our way home
The holiday is almost over, we only have to cover the almost 450 kilometer long road to Groningen, too long according to Esmee. Holidays are fun, but she doesn't like long distance drives. Then we have to go with the plane next time, we joke. But in 2008 we discovered that along this road (we go to Bad Nieuweschans through Germany) is a nice stop.

Emsflower, a large nursery with a large tropical garden and a butterfly garden, is located near Emsbüeren. And they also have a playground that seems to be bigger and more beautiful every year. This nursery of bedding and pot plants is one of the largest in Europe and you can view a part of the production process. But we think the tropical garden is much more interesting and Esmee agrees, she loves it especially to smell all those big flowers and explore the paths.

There are several areas in the tropical garden like a desert area with lots of cacti but more fun is the birdcage where all kinds of parakeets and brightly colored birds fly around. Fortunately we have taken the cameraof Esmee inside because here she wants to take pictures of the birds but they do not listen so well to her directions to sit still. I am a much better object but the picture is still a bit skew.

At the beginning of the holiday, all her photos were still a bit more skewed but these two are then again pretty straight. She has practiced a lot and that can be seen in the quality of the photos, there are a lot less that she has to throw away and she knows exactly what all the buttons are for. Except manual setting, that is something for later (if I have more knowledge of it myself).

For children, this is a fun outing and it takes us two hours to walk around and view everything. After talking to the parrots for a while, we go to the fine and not so expensive restaurant where we again eat schnitzels. That was proably the main food of the past week: schnitzels with fries and applesauce. And next to the restaurant is a partially covered playground so that makes the fun for Esmee almost complete.

It really becomes complete when Esmee can pick out plants or flowers in the extensive store for € 10. But from all the beautiful and affordable species such as orchids, she chooses some fuzzy old-age plants, at least, that's what we think. But she is totally sure, they are the ones she wants, they are the best according to her.

The last one and a half hour we put a DVD on for Esmee to watch, so we are home before she knows it. We have spent quite a lot of time in the car this holiday and she really does not like that. Occasionally we went completely crazy about the question '
is it still far?' because she repeated it almost every minute. But we did and saw a lot, also for us it was a nice week with more than just a swimming pool and playgrounds (although we also visited those almost every day). In the future we might put another travelogue with Esmee on the site when it is interesting enough.