March 2026 – kristilynk

In my last posting, I was having difficulties adding pictures and videos. I figured out that I had used the free 3 GB’s and if I wanted to continue this blog, I needed to upgrade.

I’m back so that mean I fell for the trap and I am now a paying member of this society. pshhttt.

So, we left off in Baarn at Kasteel Groeneveld. After wandering the grounds, we took a stroll on the inside

I read somewhere this Castle has the largest collection of copper ware in the Netherlands – I did not see it but next time I will ask because that would have been neat to see.

After a quick walkthrough, we all piled in the Countryman Mini Cooper. All five of us. Esther, Yvonne in the front, Jason, Brian and Shannon in the back seat and me…in the hatchback.

Hind sight, I should have asked someone to take my picture because you just cannot get the gist of it. It was fun and thankfully a quick ride back to Esthers house. We dropped off Oma (Yvonne) and headed back to downtown Utrecht so we could catch our tour of the DOMunder.

DOMunder is a subterranean tour that explores over 2000 year of history. From Roman times to medieval times and post. The destruction is all down there, underground. Before you get to the real cool stuff, the guide talks to us about the significance of what we are about to experience. The guide spoke in Dutch so that was fun trying to piece together what he was saying. My Dutch is extremely limited, like first grade level limited. When that is done, they give you a flashlight and some headphones so you can flash the light on the pieces and get a narrative in your ears of what you’re looking at.

That is all the photos I have and since today is March and this happened a month ago I don’t remember what we did after. Probably went to eat, packed up and then off to sleep because we had a long trip a head of us the next day!

I can’t wait to go back.

We started the day at he market, one last time, Jason really loves the herring! I did not partake this go round but I did peep some pretty pretty mushrooms

After the market, we took a short walk down one of the many side streets from the market plain. It was time for a real breakfast, well that was the idea but I ended up ordering a salmon salad. Way off base but super delicious.

This was our view while we waited for foods. Sadly I do not remember the name of the place.

After brunch, I guess I’ll call it, We hoofed it back to the cave to wait for our ride. Esther came to pick us up – we all 5 piled into a Mini Cooper Countrymen – the driver was only about 40 minutes – we walked around Soest, the childhood home of Jason and Shannon. It was neat to see their faces light up and all the fun memories bubbling up.

Shit picture but this was in the right behind their old house, I thought I had a pic of them in the front of their house but I think Brian took that one and not me.

Cute little pond that in the coldest of winters will freeze up and they could ice skate, right behind their house. So cool.

We popped back into the car and headed over to the Castle! Kasteel Groeneveld is in Baarn, NL. Esther and her family lived at this castle for 6 years in while growing up. I can’t even imagine, ME: Oh yes, friends, just droppedp me off at my house. FRIEND, uhmm, yea OK. You guys, this was her literal home. Built in 1710 as an example of a typical country home.

Esther dropped us off and headed back to her house to pickup Oma (Jason & Shannons mom). We met at the cafe at the Castle and had some Frites and Coffees. Our time was pretty limited because we had to be back to Utrecht for our tour of the DOMunder. More on that later. Here are some pretty pics of the Castle outside for you to enjoy.