The Netherlands -- Day Four

Day Four: Saturday, 01 May
As we saw last time, April 30th is a national holiday in the Netherlands.  Not to be outdone, May 1st is a holiday in virtually all of Europe.  Fortunately, both of the places we wanted to go were open for business.

We got up around 7:30 and finished packing the trailer into suitcases and laundry baskets.  I loaded our stuff into the van in a steady drizzle.  Around 9:30 we said good by to Eurocamp and made the 60-minute drive to see 200 year-old windmills at Kinderdijk.  It started to rain a bit harder once we were on the road.  I was driving and the Greens were following right behind us.  We got within a mile of the windmills and then the voice inside the GPS sprung a surprise: "Turn right and board ferry."  Um, what's this about a ferry?

Sure enough, I was looking straight at a little river with no way across except a ferry at the bottom of the ramp.  All I could think about was our friends Nick and Aubrey.  They took a trip to Scotland last year and the Tom Tom had them take a $40 ferry without warning.  I had no idea how much it cost to ride this boat and to make it worse, the Greens were behind me.  I spoke briefly with the Greens; their GPS was set to avoid ferrys (who knew such a setting even existed?) so their voice kept telling them they were going the wrong way.  They thought I knew a shortcut!  Anyway, the ferry had just started to pull away from the dock but when the staff saw our two vans, they backed up to wait for us to board.  So at that point we really felt like we had to get on.  In the end it wasn't that bad -- the ferry only cost €3 and the trip across the river took about three minutes.  I paid for the Green's trip on the ferry since it was basically my fault that we were on it in the first place.

As you can see from the photo, the drizzle was pretty steady.  Kinderdijk is a series of windmills built to prevent flooding.  One of them is open to the public (for a small fee, of course).  We had a nice time looking at the windmills and going inside the one that accepted visitors.

The boys were fine in the rain.  My feet got pretty wet.  I had soggy socks the rest of the day.  Ugh.

We spent about an hour with the windmills and then we drove about twenty minutes to Gouda to visit the cheese museum.  Parking in Gouda was an adventure.  We drove on very narrow streets looking for a place to park.  Finally we found a metered spot.  The Greens were right there with us and they drove off looking for a spot of their own.  We got everybody out of the van and started walking towards the museum where we planned to meet the Greens.  We were also planning to eat the lunch Tina had packed earlier that morning.  We got about twenty feet from the car when the skies opened up and it began to rain really really hard.  So we ran back to the van and ate our lunch there instead.  Tina got the kids in the car.  I was sheltering myself under the rear lift gate of the van while trying to fold up the stroller.  Finally I got the stroller inside.  It was still raining pretty hard so I tried to quickly close the lift gate and run back to the driver's side door.  Everything went according to plan until I closed the lift gate and a gallon of water slid off the door and onto my feet.

Just as I was getting settled into the car to eat my lunch, Calvin announced he had to go pee.  We tried the usual distractions (race cars and Thomas trains) to see if it could wait but they weren't working so he must have really had to go.  It was still raining very hard so neither of us were wanting to venture out to find a bathroom.  In the end, I popped open an empty water bottle and told him to make it happen.  Both of the boys thought this was great fun.  I held the bottle; Calvin filled it with "soda."  Oscar was laughing so Calvin started laughing.  This made his stomach shake which made it hard to keep things contained.  Fortunately, I was able to keep the fountain capped until the deed was done.  With that tragedy past us, we finished lunch and waited for the rain to pass.

The rain tapered off after about 10 minutes.  Off in the distance I saw the Green's van pull into a parking space.  Ryan had been driving around for 25 minutes and finally found a spot about 500 feet from where we had parked.

The Cheese Museum was a lot of fun.  We learned how people in Gouda (the Dutch pronunciation sounds like "How-da") ferment their milk curds (ie, make cheese).  Gouda cheese is made in lots of other places but according to the guy at the museum, Gouda cheese made in Gouda tastes different because of the nutrients in the soil (the cheese comes from milk which comes from cows that eat grass that grows in the dirt).

Outside, the Saturday market was in full swing.  They were selling all sorts of cheese and other trinkets.  We bought some more stroopwafels.

The Dutch have a reputations for liking to ride bicycles.  It is definitely true.  We saw lots of people on bikes and even more that were parked.

We left Gouda around 2PM and started for home.  Unlike Germany, the Dutch highways do not have unlimited speed limits.  Also unlike Germany, almost nobody drives faster than the speed limit.  The reason?  Speed cameras are everywhere.

Fortunately, the Garmin would warn me to slow down.  The voice really saved me.

Once we got into Germany, we headed for the same Esso station we had used to fill the tank on Wednesday afternoon.  Unfortunately, it was closed (for May Day?).  We had to ask the GPS to find another Esso station nearby.  It was a 25 minute drive but they were open.  On the way there we saw some lambs grazing in a field.

The Greens had stayed behind in Gouda to walk around the market for a bit longer.  I was able to call them and warn them not to go to the Esso that was closed.  They arrived at the other Esso station about 20 minutes after we did.  Tina was feeding the baby so we were a bit slow getting back on the road.

Eventually we did get back on the Autobahn.  We had pretty smooth driving all the way home.  There is something pretty fantastic about driving 105 MPH and being passed like you are standing still.  I expect to get passed by the Audis and Porches.  But getting passed by an Opel Astra (think Chevrolet Cavalier) and a Ford Focus really puts things in perspective.  I really like driving on the Autobahn.

The German countryside is really beautiful.  Rolling hills and small towns dot the landscape.  This time of year, many of the fields are yellow.  This photo doesn't really do it justice but at 100 MPH you take what you can get.

So what are they growing?  The Germans call it "Raps" (sounds like "wraps").  In English, we call it Rapeseed (Canola).  The yellow flowering plant is a main ingredient in oil and biodiesel.

We got home a little before 8PM and started unpacking so we could get ready for church on Sunday.  We all loved our trip to the Netherlands and are planning to go back again next year.

The Netherlands -- Day Three

Day Three: Friday, 30 April
Everybody was worn out by all of the walking we did at the Keukenhof on Thursday so we all slept in on Friday.  The boys slept until almost 8:30.

Initially our plan for Friday was to go to the Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht.  Google Maps said the drive would take about an hour.  On Thursday, we discovered that there was a problem with our plan -- the museum is closed on April 30th.  Indeed, most things in the Netherlands are closed on April 30th.  European vacationers take note -- when traveling to a foreign country, take the time to research public holidays in the country you will be visiting.  As fate would have it, the Dutch celebrate April 30th as Koninginnedag (Queen's Day).  This is the day that the Dutch celebrate the birthday of the queen.  The current queen has her birthday on January 31st but her mother's birthday was April 30th.  Rather than changing the holiday every time a change in leadership takes place, the Dutch have selected April 30th as the day to celebrate.

The Dutch flag is red, white, and blue but their national color is undoubtedly orange.  And if there is ever a day to display your orange pride, April 30th is it.  So why have the Dutch chosen orange as their color of choice?  The short answer is that orange is the color of the Dutch royal family.  The lineage of the current dynasty -- the House of Oranje-Nassau -- dates back to Willem van Oranje (William of Orange). Today the color orange has come to symbolize broader pride in the Netherlands and in being Dutch.  We saw lots of Dutch flags draped with an extra orange banner.

When we were trying to figure out what we were going to do on Friday, we talked briefly about going into Amsterdam.  The Eurocamp staff discouraged this idea with young children.  They told us that there is traditionally lots of public drinking on Koninginnedag and so things can get pretty rowdy.  Our travel book seemed to support this notion.

So we woke up on Friday not really knowing what we would do.  The weather had turned noticeably colder overnight and a light rain had been falling since the previous evening.  The Greens went into Haarlem to see some of the places where The Best Two Years was filmed but we didn't really want to do that so we were on our own.  We knew were weren't going to sit in the trailer and watch the rain come down so we started looking for something to do.  Fortunately, the campground had a free wireless hot spot by the main shopping area so that was a big help.  We discovered that the M.C. Escher museum in Den Haag (The Hague) was going to be open so we made the twenty minute drive into the city.  We even found a parking place right in front of the museum.  Certainly this would not have been possible on a regular work day.  A regular work day probably also would not found the streets littered with broken glass and various other leftovers from the previous evening's drunken party.

The museum was great.  I loved seeing some of the lithographs and the museum had fun games for the boys too.

Smaller and smaller, 1956

Sky and Water II, 1938

Calvin liked playing with the impossible triangle and the angled mirror.

Oscar liked the interactive television and the sphere mirror (who can photoshop me out of that photo?).

Both of the boys liked playing with the computers.

Möbius Strip II (Red Ants), 1963

Mirrors create this effect:

Here the boys look larger than life because the floor is slanted and that perspective is designed to be lost in the photo.

An Escher hand-drawn original:

Relativity, 1953

Path of Life, 1958

Three Worlds, 1955

Drawing Hands, 1948

While we were inside the museum, the rain stopped and people started attending a traveling carnival that had been set up right across the street from the museum.  We saw the carnival when we went into the museum but it didn't look like anybody was there.  By the time we got out of the museum, the carnival had become busy and the boys were hungry.  They were giving out foam crowns (orange, of course).

All of the European carnivals and festivals we have attended seem to sell the same overpriced bratwursts.  This one did not disappoint.

As expected, the dutch were displaying all sorts of orange.  We saw orange hair, orange shirts, orange hats, orange balloons, and more.

The Dutch version of a port-a-potty left a few things to be desired.

Questions that need to be asked: How do you wash your hands?  What are the ladies supposed to do?  Notwithstanding my curiosity, I was sure nobody would actually use this thing.  Look at how nasty it is -- it even has three beer cups from last night's party sitting in the urinal.  Of course, I was wrong.  I didn't have to wait long for some random Dutchman to come along and use the facilities.

After an hour or so at the carnival, we headed back to the campgrounds so we could go to the amusement park again.

The boys wanted me to ride the Aqua Shute.

I did not disappoint.

Next we rode the monorail (self-service pedal around the lake on an elevated track).  Afterward, my thighs were on fire.  We saw a man coming off the ride who looked like he almost didn't make it all the way around.

Then the boys had great fun with some urinating baby.

Of course we rode some trains.

We all liked the amusement park -- even baby Sara.

When the amusement park closed, we headed back to the trailer for dinner.  We got the boys in bed by 8PM and began the process of packing up the trailer.  We were checking out the next morning and had to be out by 10AM.  The drive back home would take us five or six hours but we were not planning on driving straight home.  Instead, we had a couple of detours planned along the way.  Check back next time for the exciting conclusion to our family's trip to the Netherlands...