Impressions of the Netherlands

Biking in the rural south - the way to get around.

Fishing for carp with all the gears

Some crazy buskerKeen surfers... if you can even call it that

Sharon in three countries at once!

American war graveyard

Canal paddle boating

yeh i guess... haha

Sharon in a shoe... well thats their kinda shoe... each to their own!

bbq in the park

For those of you who are uneducated I will give you a quick heads up…Holland is NOT ‘the Netherlands’ it is only a small part. Holland was the richest part of The Netherlands and so in the earlier days those who visited the Netherlands generally only went to Holland hence why to this day we mistake ‘the Netherlands’ with ‘Holland’!

We spent just over a week in The Netherlands and went almost everywhere! It’s not a very big country with only around 1 third of the land mass of New Zealand and most of the population centred in the three largest city’s.
We however where lucky enough to stay in a smaller town (around 800 people in total) in the southern countryside out of the business we had just experienced staying in central London!

The first day was nice and relaxing as we were tired from starting at 4:30am the previous morning to leave London so Gijs and Lois just took us for a scenic drive around their local area. We visited a German war graveyard with 31,000 rough stone crosses; it was amazing to see that many spread out before you.
Thursday to Friday we checked out Amsterdam! Just out of Amsterdam we went to a beach as it was a scorching day, the beach was really busy and the water kind of brown so lots of people sunbathing, a few topless!! :-p but not many swimming. We should have taken this as a queue not to go in but since it was so hot we inexperienced Kiwi’s dived right in! I must say it was nice in the water but think that our togs will never again be the same colour, lucky I like the colour brown!
There was about a half a foot swell so not really any surf but we saw a guy try to teach a lesson to some eager-to-surf Dutch, the poor people had no chance. They did there stretches on the shore practised standing up then paddled out in their huge boards just to sit and bob and look back at the beach for a few hours without the hope of catching anything… But I guess they can say they have tried surfing?!?

We then progressed into the city sunburnt and bathed in the muddy water to meet up with Gijs friend Petra who we were staying with and had organised a bbq in the park. It seemed that this was what the majority of the city had decided to do because it was such a beaut day so the park was packed! We once again enjoyed charcoal flavoured food cooked on a disposable bbq, drank some beer, enjoyed good company, got in trouble with a hobo who told us we where scaring off his birds and breathed in the fresh (or not so fresh…) air of Amsterdam.

The next day was spent in a whirl wind tour of Amsterdam’s best including Anne Frank’s house (though only from the outside as the line was three blocks long!), marvelling at old architecture, looking at street performers, looking at old churches, a fun paddle boat experience on the canals, checking out the notorious ‘red light district’ which includes the girls in the windows and ‘special café’s’ (don’t worry we only looked…honest!), and Van Goh’s gallery (though that too had a long line and who we were with didn’t want to go in so sadly only looked at the building… another time maybe?). We headed home that afternoon, and with traffic jams the whole way it took double the time we took getting there… argh! We had a little nap and then headed out to a ‘beach’ party which had bad beer but good company and we enjoyed hanging out with the crazy Dutch boys in a party much like we have back at home, I say only boys as the girls where all too scared to speak English!

The next day was quiet due to our host being extremely hung over and the weather being wet so we spent the day organising our further travel plans and biking around the local countryside… very pretty. Though we did notice an odd spectacle of the Dutch and their love of miniature animals as decoration outside their houses… Every house seemed to have at least 3-6 miniature horses, miniature goats, expensive (and miniature) ducks, and little fish ponds filled with little gold fish? We asked our friends why this was but no one could explain ha!

Sunday was spent touring the far (or not so far) south as our Dutch friends wanted to prove to us that they actually did have hills! We climbed the largest hill all of 300meters and at the top were able to stand on Dutch, German and Belgium soil all at the same time which made us laugh as the Dutch had to share their tallest hill with two other countries! Next we headed to the American grave yard for the Second World War and were amazed at the pure size of it! Each grave had its own marble grave stone; Jewish graves had the Star of David and all others a cross. There were walls of marble with all the names of the missing, a wall that showed where American troops fought and the story along with it. Along with this was a memorial church and a visitors building which contained stories of men who had died to save others and received the US Medal of Honor. One story explained that a man had seen two grenades land in a building that his platoon was occupying, with no time to throw them away he jumped on these two grenades covering them with his own body to save all the other men! The grave yard was very elaborate and moving for everyone.
We moved on from there to check out a quaint little town with an old castle and loads of mines under the hills. We headed home after a lovely trip and just chilled out that night.

Monday was spent visiting local farms. All the local farmers hearing Andy was from a farm in NZ wanted to show him their farms! And at night we went fishing for Carp, and even with the flashest fishing gear including a gadget to tell you when a fish was nibling the line, bait that smelt like strawberry, sling shot to shoot in fish attracting pellets, hundreds of different fly’s, a mat for the fish to sit on so it wont get hurt and very expensive line and rods with a holder we were once again unsuccessful!