During our stay in Rotterdam, we hired a car and spent the day driving around various parts of the Delta Works. The Delta Works are a series of dams, sluices and storm surge barriers constructed to protect a significant part of the southwest of the Netherlands from the sea. The motivation to construct the Delta Works came about after a large flood in 1953 that killed over 1,800 people in the Netherlands. One of the...
In the north of The Netherlands is Freisland, where Wim’s second cousin, once removed was living in a small village. After spending time in Vries our next port of call was to stay with Ankia, Cas (Not sure of spelling) and Jeronimo in Holwerd. Holwerd, near the north coast of The Netherlands, is a small but vibrant village. Living in a old house (well, very old by NZ standards) that they had recently renovated. This...
After staying with Irina, we were keen to visit more people from The Netherlands. We went to stay with Wietske and Jan in the little village called Vries. The older couple had been living on the property for 40 years, keeping horses and cows while raising their family. Their jobs were both quite interesting, Jan a computer science lecture at the local university. Wietske an environmental science teacher. It was a shame, a couple of...
We took a turn away from the big citys to a small town called
Deventer.
Holly had jacked up a couch to sleep on with Irina, a medical doctor
working in the local hospital.
Deventer was a nice, quiet town with an old story about boiling criminals in a pot of oil.
We were lucky enough to be there for the annual bath-tub race where participants decorated bath-tubs and raced them on the river.
Amsterdam mostly consisted of walking and biking around the city, just being a tourist. Amsterdam is also where we meet up with Wim. The first couple of days were spent just catching up on life after hiking in Norway. After having just finished reading Anne Frank’s diary, it only made sense to visit the Annex. The following day we biked out to Amstelveen, mostly to get away from the hordes of tourists in Amsterdam and...
