I only went out for ink… famous last words.
I think it’s safe to say I’d finally slipped into full holiday mode.
No alarm. No schedule. No rushing from one place to the next. Just a leisurely morning chatting with Mike while he made his way halfway around the world from New Zealand. We’d now been apart for almost three weeks, and after following his flights through Auckland and Hong Kong, I was getting rather excited knowing he’d be joining me tomorrow.
With the hotel room tidied, my pink travel bag repacked (after yesterday’s explosion of clothes all over the room), and a carefully researched destination in mind, it was time to head out on what can only be described as a stationery pilgrimage.
Destination?
Hummelman Pen Shop.
Now, normal people might plan a day around museums, canals or famous landmarks.
I planned mine around fountain pens.
Before jumping on the Metro, I wandered along the canals, stopping to enjoy a supermarket sushi lunch on a bench while watching the world drift by. One thing I’ve loved about Europe is how easy it is to simply slow down. There always seems to be another bench, another canal, another interesting person cycling past. At home I rarely make time to sit still. Here, it almost feels compulsory.
Three Metro stops later I arrived at Blijdorp and made the short walk to the shop.
Unfortunately, so had my cold.
After battling a chesty cough for several days, the walk left me needing a lengthy recovery stop on a nearby bench before I even made it through the front door. Thankfully the shop didn’t open immediately, so I had the perfect excuse to sit quietly, catch my breath and convince myself I was perfectly fine.
Eventually the doors opened.
And wow.
For anyone who loves fountain pens, this place is dangerous.
Display cabinets filled with beautiful pens. Shelves lined with inks I’d never seen before. Gorgeous notebooks and papers begging to come home with me.
I promised myself I’d only buy inks.
That promise lasted approximately 10 minutes.
The owner was incredibly patient, happily pulling pen after pen from the display while I admired them all. I found three gorgeous Pilot Iroshizuku inks, a stunning Visconti blue-purple ink…
…and then I spotted her.
A beautiful pink marbled Visconti from the Vincent van Gogh Collection.
I’d admired Viscontis for years but had never quite found one that felt like my pen. The first one I tried wasn’t quite right. The colour wasn’t what I’d expected and it had an extra-fine nib, which isn’t really my thing.
Then the gentleman handed me another.
Pink.
Swirls of pinks and pearl.
A lovely medium nib.
The moment I picked it up I knew I was in trouble.
It felt perfect in my hand.
There are sensible purchasing decisions…
…and then there are holiday purchasing decisions.
Reader, I made the holiday decision.
An hour later I walked out with five new inks and my very first Visconti fountain pen, wearing the biggest grin imaginable and trying very hard not to think about the exchange rate.
Outside, I celebrated in the only appropriate way—with a scoop of ice cream and another hour of journalling while admiring my latest acquisition. Somewhere during all of this my phone quietly gave up and died, which felt like the universe politely suggesting I’d spent enough time shopping for one day.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped by the supermarket to collect dinner, a few drinks for the room (no fridge meant buying just enough each trip), and settled in for a quiet evening catching up with Mike before his final flight to Europe.
Tomorrow we’d finally be reunited.
And yes…
The Visconti is still one of my favourite souvenir purchases I’ve ever made.
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