Advertisement
Published: June 20th 2014
the shore line?
this is what parts the sea from the land.. A HOLIDAY WITHIN A HOLIDAY.
(..when one holiday just isn't enough) DAY SEVENTEEN:
we'd had this day planned for a while now, our idea was to go to the touristy location of Texel. Texel is island only 30 minutes on the ferry away. So it's just a short trip away. We went with dads brothers and their wives and my cousin came too. So with the 9 of us it was going to be a really nice day out. One of my dads brothers knew the area really well so we left like the day up to him, with the places we'd see or visit.. At 8:00 everyone had arrived at the house so that we could carpool too the ferry, just because we didn't need to take extra cars over. The plan was meet at the house at 8:00 leave at 8:30 and board at 9:30 and that's pretty cruisey because the drive itself to Texel is only 40 minutes, so we had plenty of time. The boys went in the car with my aunty, and the other car was all females.
As arranged, we were there right on time with still a
TOP VIEW
this is a shot of the 'shrimping boat' that we boarded. You can see that although it is out for business, there's still a lot of sitting area so it's a little bit touristy. 10 minute wait for the ferry to dock and all the people from that trip to exit. The ferry trips went every hour on the half hour so 30 minutes up and 30 minutes back. We boarded and parked the car then went up to the panorama deck to check out the view. Standing at the window you can already see how close the island is, so the trip wasn't going to be long at all. We left off and before you knew it there was an announcement that said we had to go back to our cars because we'd be arriving soon. So, that's what we did.
We drove off the ferry and followed the boys, they knew where they were going so it was best to follow. They lead us to the water where there were lots of fishing boats around. The were going to go on a boat that was heading out to sea to do a bit of 'Shrimping' so we bought our tickets and boarded the next boat. The boat smelled fishy. but we found a seat and headed out to sea. The boat announced that the soul purpose of it was to catch
QUITE A COLLECTION
you can see the crabs, the star fish, the fishies, the jelly fish, the green sea grass, and hopefully some shrimp seeing that, that was the main mission. shrimp but there was a chance that we could come across some seals. We got to a good spot and then they dropped some nets that were roughly 60 meters by 8 meters so it could catch A LOT of shrimp. We pulled the nets up a few times, but the boat people weren't happy with the amount we'd caught so they'd but them back under water. Then the third time, they were happy with the amount they'd caught so they reeled in all the nets and emptied all of what they'd caught into a big tub. They hadn't just caught shrimp, there were starfish, fish, crabs, flat fish, jelly fish, eel looking things and a heap of other stuff that i just have no clue what it is . So once they'd dumped it in the tub they went through all of the stuff they'd caught and a bit of information about it. Then they ran all the shrimp through a machine that sorted through what was shrimp and what needed to go back into the sea. Once all that was done they go through a massive frying sort of machine that cooks them, then we all had a
BIT OF MUSEUM ART
i think they had to make a whale sculpture out of just bits and pieces. choice to try it. Well i did, but it turns out i'm not much of a shrimp fan.
After the presentation was done, we where slowly heading back, unfortunately there weren't any seals out and about. But plenty of seagulls, so we had that going for us. We got off the boat and jumped back into the car, my uncle had already planned our next location with lunch included. We ended up at a massive museum that also had more seals and a lot about the evolution of the whales and the history behind them, it had a lot about their communications and habitat. The museum was very well lit and very informative which made it quite interesting. For lunch we had a hot dog, and croissant with the best.. a chocomel. Then to finish it off a delicious vanilla slice, it was great. Then we headed through to a bit of an aquarium where there was lots of fish, a lot of them we'd already seen on the shrimp boat. But there was a lot of sea animals and pretty fishies it was really nice. Once we'd hung around the aquarium for a bit an announcement came over
bit of a view.
the shots a bit blurry.. we were driving. that they were going to feed the seals soon. The Ecomare (the name of the museum/aquarium) was a sea animal recuperation so any injured animals would go there to get better so that they could be released back into the sea. They had 5 baby seals that had been left by their mother so they were going to raise the seals until they were old enough to be independent and be released back into the wild. The thing with seals is they get an eye disease once they get old, which usually results in them dying around the age of 20 because they just can't hunt anymore. But with Ecomare they've rescued some of the ones with damaged eyes and at Ecomare they can live to be roughly 40. They're all fed and looked after there and some of them are even trained to do a few tricks. So when they were being fed the lady would just talk about them and why they where at Ecomare, they're story and a little bit about there personality. Then when there was no more fish to feed them, she'd tap the bucket three times and that's how they'd know that there was
FERRY PHOTO
you can see the ocean and the location. no more food. By the end of that we'd seen most of it, so we thought it was about to move on.
We drove for a bit, and then found ourselves at a bit of a campground, but once we followed the track for a bit and had a massive hike up the sand we where over looking over the beach, we chilled around the beach for a bit, we buried my cousin for a bit. Normal beach stuff. They had some people flying kites, but they were massive kites. So they really had to hold on and in some cases the kites the kite just dragged them along a bit. By then it was getting close to 6:00 and people were getting a little bit hungry So drove into the center of Texel and looked for a place to have dinner. We found a nice little place called 'Los Amigos' that was sort of Mexican styled. My little sister, my cousin, and myself all had pizza, the others got more fancy meals, i wasn't too hungry seeing that we had a sort of big lunch. After a delicious dinner, that was huge. We ordered a 'normal' sized pizza,
WE'RE GOING FISHING!
here's a photo of how the shrimping works, the metal arms go in the water and part.. then it catches all the shrimpies.. well i didn't even get half way through luckily we could still take it home for leftovers! By now it was nearing 8:00 so we thought we could make it back to the ferry and catch the 8:00 one back to Den Helder. So that's what we did. We were back in Den Helder at 8:30, then back home at about 9:00.
Everyone was pretty tired, but it was too early for bed, so we chucked on 'The Amazing Spiderman 2' and grabbed a few alcoholic drinks and we were set. But the second the movie was done, it was bed time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0376s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
