Our Magical Mystery Tour of Huis Ten Bosch

I really had NO IDEA what we were doing when we headed to Huis Ten Bosch for the day on our first full day in Sasebo. I, honestly, thought it was a Dutch settlement with a few brick buildings, some windmills and tulips in the springtime.

 

 

Imagine my surprise when we park and walk up and I see the ticket booth.

 

 

Sue: "How much were our tickets?"

Mick: "Don't ask."

 

 

However, at the end of our third day of entertaining our children on vacation on the Southwestern island of Japan, called Kyshu, with an hour of holding monkeys, playing catch with a dolphin after a great, up-close dolphin show, followed by a pirate cruise and asking them "What was your favorite part of our vacation?" and hearing "Riding the bike at Huis Ten Bosch"....I would have paid double of the "Don't Ask" price. :)

 

 

Here are "a few" pictures.

Gorgeous, gorgeous buildings and canals and windmills all around along with shops and stuff. This is us on a canal ride. It was SO CUTE. When we took off they had bubbles blowing out of the bow. :)

Funny "Engrish" translation. We had two grasses of red. :)

Beautiful, beautiful windmills. (Zip!) Gigi is digging for her special "blankie." Yes. I KNOW. I need to wean her.

Nico, every time we see a "Fleur" sign we take a picture. I have another one from Kyoto that I need to send. xo

We went to a "Paint a Wooden Shoe" place. The girls had a GREAT time and spent an incredibly long, leisurely time painting their wooden shoe bank.

This is classic Audrey attention to detail. ;-)

Gigi and I, and then Gigi and Mick, rode the carousel over and over and over again while her sisters were painting their shoes. Then she came in and tried on a bunch of shoes. It was SO CUTE! I took about 10 pictures of this scene, so either be disappointed or consider yourself lucky! :)

We heard the tune of "YMCA" coming from a street over and ran out and saw this dance troupe dancing and smiling like I've never seen anybody dance and smile before! Disney has nothing on the Huis Ten Bosch dancers!

Seriously. Two seasons of passes to Disneyworld and I have never seen such smiles and enthusiasm. :)  After the song was over they came after us with squirt guns. And speaking of random water fun...again...there's many, and I mean, A LOT of pictures I'm not subjecting you to viewing. Spray gardens, random baby pools, swamp coolers. Very fun, random fun!!!!

Then we went to the world tent and found, for the first time in over a year, but who's counting, a Corona LIGHT. My FAVORITE beer!

In the International Corona Light tent was this singer. He was really good! A fun tune...of course we didn't understand a word. He called himself "Unicorn" and we posed like this and are talking about how it will probably be his standard pose from here on out! (Obvious!)

Then we went into the Kids' Zone and had SUCH a FUN time!!!!!

I mean, not the safest, but still FUN! :)

We like to give each child a chance to break a limb when we're on vacation.

Don't want to play favorites! :)

It was definitely Gigi's favorite part of the trip!

And well...I had fun too. :)

How I long for the olden days without my bad back. I SO would have been doing flips on this very jumpy jumpee!

Then we went upstairs and Gigi was ridiculously happy in the ball pit. Upstairs was very Children's Museum-like.

I love this picture because I see lots of legs and heads and can't really figure which are attached to whose. :)

Claire and I put on a puppet show. :)

And then we finally rented this bike for an hour and it was the highlight of a very lit up day! :)

And Gigi was able to fall asleep sitting up in her seat.

And, the poor lamb, slumping in her seat.

As well as lounging in Claire's bigger seat that we moved her into so that she could have a longer nap.

Mick and the big girls popped into a few more "attractions." This one was an optical illusion house and believe me when I tell you that I know there are a ton of photos on this blog, but you're not getting half of them. Or a third. Perhaps note even a fourth. We took a lot of photos!!! :)

They did that while the little girls and I waited patiently outside!

And then we biked some more and took some more pictures. This is a favorite! It was a brat, as in sausage house, but I had them pose as Rock 'n' Roll "brats" as in kids who aren't sweet. ;-)

Hooray for Huis Ten Bosch!!! As Audrey said, if we lived in Sasebo, we would totally have season passes. We didn't know what to expect and we had such a fun time! I kept belting out the Beatles song "Magical Mystery Tour" because there has to be more than a few benefits of being THE ONLY AMERICANS in the entire park (The entire day! So odd.) and one of them is definitely ♪ ♫ singing ♪♫ at will.

We'll see you in the spring when you have tulips,

Huis Ten Bosch!

Hooray!!!!