5th wedding anniversary (Or: A trip to Breda)

My oh my, how time flies. It’s been five years since Marco and I got married! This year we went to Breda for a few days. Marco chose the location and hotel secretly. I must say – he chose well!

Breda is a city relatively close to the border with Belgium, with about 180,00 inhabitants. The only times I had been there was to transfer from one train to another, so it was new to me.

We stayed at the lovely Bliss Boutique hotel in the city centre. I can highly recommend it! Marco booked through booking.com, and thus didn’t have a chance to select a specific suite. However, it worked out wonderfully as we were placed in the Long Island suite.

It was perfect for us, as it comes with a separate sitting area (pictured below), an eating area, a king-size bed, a bath and double shower… the list goes on and on. The location was also great, being right next to the Grote Kerk (Church of Our Lady) in the heart of the city.

We also got complimentary prosecco and chocolates upon arrival, a welcome surprise as we hadn’t mentioned anything about it being our anniversary!

sitting area

Yes, there was even a wooden boat hanging from the ceiling. And beautiful windows which let the gorgeous sky in…

While walking to the hotel, we went through Valkenburg park. It was beautiful, and luckily we had gorgeous weather for the mini-trip. We were in Breda from Tuesday to Thursday last week. Thursday was coincidentally the last day of summer-like weather in the Netherlands. Friday the weather suddenly changed and brought cold, wind and rain. We didn’t even need our jackets while in Breda. So much good luck there!

Relaxing at Valkenburg city park

We also saw some boats which could be rented. Check out the name of one of them:

The name is boot-er-ham. In Dutch the word for boat is boot. It’s a play on the Dutch word for sandwich, or boterham. Unfortunately the other names were not visible.

Another beautiful picture was of the Grote Kerk at sunset, when we were walking back to our hotel:

On our second day we visited Castle Bouvigne, just outside of the city (about 8 minutes ride with bus 6). Unfortunately the castle isn’t open that often, but we could visit the gardens outside. There was a French garden (pictured later in this blog post), an English garden and a German garden.

view of the castle

reflection of the castle

French gardens – almost everything was symmetrical

A statue. Check out the spider web behind it!

Statue of a child

All in all, a fun trip, and a great way to celebrate our 5th anniversary!