Skhay-vuh-ninghen......right?

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Geo: 52.1081, 4.27309

We enjoyed a late Sunday morning breakfast with the family, then it was off to het Keringhuis, part of the WaterWerks. It's a giant gate that can be closed across the Maas. It was pretty cool! It was a rainy day, but this was mostly inside. The Dutch have learned a thing or thirty about managing floods and storm surges, and the engineering is truly amazing.

After the Keringhius, we headed over to Scheveningen. This is a a resort area of Holland, with beaches, a boardwalk, rides -- a very pleasnt place to spend a morning.

Unless of course, there's a bit of a storm coming in off the North Sea.

Oof. It was SO windy, and off-and-on rainy. We had lunch on the boardwalk, and then Dejo & I went to find a geo-cache on the end of the pier. Wow, was it gusting there! But we dropped off the Texas bug that we had brought with us, and picked up a rock that wanted to come home. It was a really challenging (windy, rainy, sandblasty) walk back to the car. I took off my glasses, lest they be etched by the sand.

Ans, Jerome, Dejo & I went to Madurodam – a miniature city. There are replicas of many Dutch buildings/blocks/city centers, in amazing detail. There are also lots of hands-on bits, like exhibits where yo can try your hand at putting a barge through a lock, or putting a coin in a machine, which then sends a small truck out, with a souvenir for you. I had a lot of fun posing Gnorm the Gnome in different pictures, and the whole thing was just really cool.

The evening was pleasantly relaxing -- we had dinner at Ans & Joops place, and watched the England-Italy Euro Cup game. I've never watched more soccer than I have this week!

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Photos

We are here.
There are multiple structures in the WaterWerks system

The barriers, diagrammed
These large barriers can be closed across the river, when a storm surge is imminent

A smaller version of the Keringhuis barrier
We saw the real one that morning