The Netherlands

Our friends, Richard, Henk and Wouter, showed us around the rest of Netherlands (outside of Amsterdam). They were very gracious hosts and tour guides. Holland is a very flat country built upon water, where about half of its land and about two-thirds of its people live below sea level. They have reclaimed much land and have prevented flooding through an ingenious and elaborate system of dams, dikes and windmills. It’s amazing how they have developed the land and created such a thriving community.

The first place we visited was a quaint fishing town called Volendam. It is a delightful fishing town, where it is known for its raw herring sandwich with sweet pickles and onions on top (our sandwich was minus the onions). Joh enjoyed the sandwich, whereas, I (Joyce) found it to be too raw for my taste. Supposedly, it is what one should eat to cure a hangover. I'll take Joh’s word for it because it helped her hangover from the all night (maybe I should say an early morning) pub crawl in Amsterdam that we went to the night before.

Our second stop was Kinderdijk, a town with about 20 windmills. Kinderdijk hosts many of the oldest windmills that were created around the 1700's to prevent flooding by bridging the water level differences as well as pumping water into reservoirs. We rented bikes and rode around this area, which was tons of fun. I (Joyce) had some difficulty getting onto the bike (not due to my ankle), because the bikes are made for the Dutch, who tend be tall (at least much taller than my height of 5ft and 4in). It is a very scenic town filled with charming windmills.

Our third stop was the Neeltje Dams. It is the place, where the delta works was created, in response to the North Sea Flood of 1953, where 25,000 people were killed from a high tide in the middle of the night. It is a complex system of about 13 dams, where they have sluice gate doors that allow marine sea life to flourish behind the dams as well as control the water level to prevent flooding.
Our last stop was another delightful town called Veere. We had some Dutch food, pancakes, and good tasty Dutch Heinken beer (not the American import bitter tasting kind). Thank you to our awesome tour guides: Richard, Henk and Wouter! You guys are always welcome to visit us in the States.