Our quest for the perfect retreat venue continues… Could it be The Netherlands?

On a boat…?

In a windmill…? (Well, for dining that is)

A bike anyone…?

What the Dutch do on a dull day. Grab some friends, few drinks, a boat with its own pool and log fire to warm it up. Up and down the canals we go.

Or you just sit on a barge at the edge of a canal, drink a little beer, eat a few chips and watch the world float by.

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This is the ceiling of the beautiful food market in Rotterdam. Huge, curved and gloriously painted. And people live in there – those are their windows. Clever, different, unusual.

This, my friends, was lunch in the Rotterdam market. Could there be a more perfect collaboration than all these glorious elements having a moment together in a bun? The duck was sublime and my gentleman friend – a scholar and a foodie deduced that it had been treated to a sous vide process which explained its wondrous texture.

I tasted this cheese. It was as lavender-y as it looks. Also, would be good with Guinness I think.

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This is the beautiful bar (or one of them) behind my table at Aan de Poel a two star Michelin restaurant on a lake in a small village out of Amsterdam. I have gone on and on about the food (in a pictorial way) on Instagram so I won’t repeat all that here.

Our wine arrived having been previously dipped in wax. The foil is removed and the dipping is done so as to ensure all is airtight.

I badly wanted this to be a truffle but it was a choux puff filled with truffley wonder and finished with a sort of craquelin as choux is sometimes. But I couldn’t quite get the detail clear from the foreign waiter (all waiters are foreign to someone) so we just enjoyed it anyway. My guess is charcoal.

Back in the kitchen…

One discovery I made was something that looked like a pancake, called Dutch egg cakes. They are like a shallow, large sponge drop, the size of a little plate. They can be bought in the supermarket in a packet. I immediately scuttled home with some to make it into a summer pudding with all the gorgeous berries about everywhere.

This is take two, made with the the sponge cakes layered with mascarpone, whipped eggs, a little sugar and a gorgeous rum liqueur from a friend. Cut into wedges, it was a most acceptable Tiramisu. Quite delicious for breakfast.

Bye bye Amsterdam. Do feel free to send feedback on where you think would make the best retreat spot. Tomorrow I am up with the birds to fly to Ljubljana. Photos will follow.

p.s. My aforementioned friend is a wildlife photographer also. He teaches photography in Africa. He is going back there in a few weeks to take some photos for us so you can get an idea of how a retreat would look at a safari lodge. The owners of this particular glamping lodge are friends. I have stayed there and they’ll have us, so that’s definitely on the radar for next year. It is boutique so we can only host 10 people plus me and my zoololgist son who has worked in Africa and can tell us tales of surprise encounters with elephants and being promptly given and gun on arrival and sent off into the night to be on rhino poaching watch. I can feel my heartbeat increasing at the thought.