One of the big advantages of having a blog, in my opinion, is the opportunity to meet interesting people. This happens through daily interaction (comments or social media), emails from all over the world, but also by meeting them at events, or just for a coffee at a hip café – meetings that sometimes materialise into beautiful friendships. I am very grateful to both my blogs for bringing me close to like-minded people, and even if I can’t honour every single one of the invites I get, I’m sure there are still good friends out there I haven’t met yet. Last Saturday was a special day, it was finally the time to meet some of my fellow expat bloggers face to face. We created a FB group last year and I was surprised by the big number of bloggers who registered. I knew most of them, some in real life, some only virtually, but I never thought of counting them until now. I was so excited to finally meet these people!

We met at Tula, a cosy yoga studio in Spaarndammerbuurt, where we had the place to ourselves for a whole afternoon. No, we didn’t do yoga, we ate cake instead, and drank tea and coffee. The homemade cakes were absolutely delicious and the coffee was brewed on the spot, by the coffee expert The Chill Bean (who brought Kenya coffee from Friedhats) and his very skilled helper who prefers to remain anonymous. The meeting was a success, I would say. We instantly bonded and there was a lot of positive energy in the room. We talked about writing, photography, SEO, followers and other very interesting subjects – at least for the people who were in that room 🙂 Are you wondering who was there? Here they are: Amsterdamming, Amsterdive, A Wanderlust for Life, Caroletta’s Treats, Everywhere Bucket List, Justamente, Julieta, 103Weeks, The Chill Bean, UnClogged in Amsterdam.

I’ll make sure to put together a complete list, containing also the other bloggers, who couldn’t join this time. For now, I challenge you to identify all of the above in the pictures I took at the meeting (thanks to Amsterdamming, there is also a portrait of myself in this collection of happy people):