The Netherlands, Holland or the Dutch?


Advertisement
Netherlands' flag
Europe » Netherlands » North Holland » Volendam
July 4th 2007
Published: July 4th 2007
Edit Blog Post

Greetings from The Netherlands...errr, Holland...where dutch people ride bikes and from what I can guess, eat, sleep and live. We spent the fourth of July in Amsterdam where we took a Canal Tour and went to the Anne Frank House. All the streets had the mixture of the smell of marijuana, body odor, stagnant water and every so often, pastries. It rained off and on all day but it made the ambience of the city very nice.

I must say that all these kooks who want to legalize marijuana back home just need to spend one sober day in Amsterdam and they'll change their minds, after bathing their entire bodies in that waterless hand sanitizer.

On the lighter side, I did have a fantastic Dutch Trappist Ale called La Trappe Tripel with dinner last night and Katherine has had poffetjes (mini pancakes with butter and sugar) every day since coming to Holland. I have been beer tasting, Katherine has been hot chocolate tasting. Apparently, she is trying to get Diabetes by the time she gets back. Her favorite hot chocolate was in our favorite town so far, Marken. It used to be a little island but they extended a strip of land to it so you can drive right on. You feel like you've gone back in time because all the houses are really traditional and the people where the traditional clothing from the 1800s. Katherine fed a baby goat. Since we have been travelling with Katherine's grandma Yola we have gotten to see a lot of non-toursity places like, Hoorn, Marken, Volendam and half a dozen other small dutch farming towns in the Northern part of Holland.

In Amsterdam, The Anne Frank house was very sobering. It is tragic to think that it is simply one example of literally thousands of stories just like it. The neat thing was that there was a line that extended about 30 minutes around the corner. It didn't feel very toursity which was nice. The canals are very cool and we were able to cover a lot of the city by taking a boat tour through them. Unfortunately we ran out of time for the Van Gogh and Rijk Museums. There is always next time...

Tomorrow we are going to Haarlem (seeing the Corrie ten Boom house and the church where Handel and Bach played the organ) and Voorschoten before going on to Belgium where we will be staying just outside of Antwerp and spending time in Brugge, Gent and Brussels. Hopefully the rain with let up.

See you soon,

Chet

Advertisement



Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 16; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0624s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb