Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Delft, The Netherlands

Published on March 31, 2005 in Travel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

We spent the day wandering the quaint streets of Delft, famous for it’s blue and white ceramics “Delft Blue” and as the burial place of the House of Orange, Holland’s Royal Family.

They are buried here in the ‘New’ Church.
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We had a wonderful relaxing day in this sleepy little town. I think the pictures speak for themselves so I’m going to keep quiet now and let them…

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We had a great traditionally Dutch meal at “Der Waag” which is in the old weighing and measuring guildhall. As usual Jessica was a great tour guide.

Cheers,

Mark & Ali

All of Holland in 60 minutes and The Hague

Published on March 29, 2005 in Travel. 8 Comments Tags: , , , .

Well another jam packed day in Holland. Our fantastic hosts; Walter and Jessica and my Tante Joop took us on another great day of Dutch site seeing. We started with Madurodam which is a unique minature village. It opened in 1952 and contains incredibly detailed models at a 1:25 scale of famous Dutch landmarks. This is George at the entrance.
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And this is Walter’s finger in front of one of Madurodam’s residents to give you some perspective on what 1:25 means.
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The ‘village’ has 16,000 model people, and today at least one slightly oversized monkey. The Queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix was the ‘Mayor’ of Madurodam until she was crowned in 1980. The models are spectacularly detailed hopefully our pictures will give you some idea of this. I’m going to start by showing you a real picture of the Gouda Town Hall from yesterday and then the pictures of the models I took this morning.IMG 1270IMG 1296
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We took pictures of many famous Dutch landmarks which I’m not going to identify for you, we’re hoping to see lots of them in the next few days ‘for real’ so we’ll label them then but here’s a few that I think are great even without you knowing where or what they are.

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Of course we did get one shot of some strange giant people walking around Madurodam.IMG 1323

After Madurodam we went to Simonis which was in the harbour at Scheveningen. Jessica, Walter and I ate about a kilo of mussels each. They were great but we had to be rolled out of the restaurant to the car.IMG 1335

Our next stop was The Hague which is the political capital of Holland (the Dutch are very strange they have their Parliament in The Hague and their official capital in Amsterdam) and contains the parliament buildings and the palaces of the Queen. You’ve seen them in mini so here they are ‘all grown up’.IMG 1370IMG 1348

Our next stop was the world famous “Betsie TerHaar Museum” we started with the main wing shown hereIMG 1338IMG 1342 Our next stop was the “OnMyOwnInTheHagueAnnex”.IMG 1367 For those of you who don’t live in the Netherlands, these are my mother’s family home in The Hague and then her first living on her own apartment also in The Hague.

Next stop a museum called the Prison Gate, no pictures allowed inside but this one outside.
IMG 1359 They must put some kind of shining agent in Dutch shampoo.

Cheers,

Mark & Ali

P.S. Here is George in a miniature version of Amsterdam, can you guess what part of the town?IMG 1317

Easter in the Netherlands

Published on March 28, 2005 in Travel. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

We slept in late at Jess and Walter’s in Zoetermeer and after a nice breakfast we headed for Moordrecht which is a small town where my cousin Nancy and her husband Hugo live. They had champagne and all kinds of great food laid out (they said it was for Easter but I like to believe it was just for the Canadians visiting). Also there were my cousin Harriėt and her husband Wim, my Aunt (Tante) Joop and Uncle (Oom) Rob. And most importantly all of the kids. There are a lot of the “Davilar” clan so here is each ‘group’ as a family portrait and we’ll let you know who everyone is:
Jessica and Walter
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Nancy and Hugo and Max and Jip (they are twins, Max is on the left, Jip on the right)IMG 1262
Harriėt and Wim with Tim and Daan IMG 1239
And last but not least the patriarch and matriarch of the clan my Tante Joop and Oom RobIMG 1241
This is almost the whole clan; missing are Cynthia and Louis who live in Switzerland. There will be a quiz in tomorrow’s update so please take some time now to memorize everyone.
Hugo took Wim, Ali and I on a tour around the polder. A polder is an area of land recovered from the sea and is surrounded by dykes which are dams made of earth. The traditional Dutch windmills were used as pumps to pump the water from the polder side of the dyke to the sea side of the dyke allowing the land to be used. We went to the lowest place in the Netherlands, which is 6.74 meters below sea level. IMG 1235 The top of that blue post is sea level. I think this picture of Wim, me and Hugo gives a great perspective on how ‘low’ the country is and what an extraordinary feat of imagination and engineering it was and is to have carved a prosperous country out of the ‘sea’.IMG 1237

In the theme of engineering we held the first World Jenga Tower championships in the Moordrecht Dome. Entrants from Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium competed to build the highest tower without dropping more than two blocks in the construction processes. IMG 1246IMG 1251IMG 1252IMG 1258

The winning team of Max and Jip were hung by the feet as a result of their victoryIMG 1263

Here is the peaceful view from Nancy and Hugo’s back deck.IMG 1254

From Moordrecht we went to Gouda (the place that the cheese is named for) though the Dutch (who should know) say “howdaa” not “Gooda” like we would. It’s one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands. The cathedral like building you see below is actually the town hall.IMG 1266IMG 1267IMG 1269IMG 1270IMG 1273

As we were leaving Gouda we spotted a Poffertjes house. Poffertjes are little round pancakes served with lots of butter and covered in icing sugar. They are as good as they sound. I ate 33 of them and could have eaten at least 33 more.IMG 1274

Then it was back to Jessica and Walter’s where George had been partying with Boudewyjn, meaning ‘loyal friend’.
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Cheers,

Mark & Ali

P.S. For those of you who want to study Dutch pronunciation here’s the quick guide http://www.stanford.edu/~sipma/prexlp.html

P.P.S. I think this one speaks for it’s self.IMG 1265

Welcome to The Continent

Published on March 28, 2005 in Travel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yesterday we left Great Britain behind for the the mainland. Our train took us through the Chunnel to Brussels. Took about 4 hours, 20 minutes or so of which was under the English Channel. The tunnel is 163,680 feet or almost 50 kilometers long it cost about $21 billion to build. Here’s a picture of the inside of the tunnel.tunnel

Our first stop was Brussels however we only saw the train station as we were rushing to meet with Jessica (my first cousin on my mother’s side) and Walter (her husband) in Antwerp. Antwerp was beautiful, we walked around the old town, the beautiful cathedral, the ‘Steen’ Castle, the statues and the like. We tried to take some pictures here but many of them were too dark, so I’ll have to photoshop them when we get a moment. Here are a few that look OK. IMG 1268IMG 1216IMG 1224IMG 1225

The cathedral is “Our Lady” and dates back to the 14th century. The statue there is of Silvius Brabo, he was a Roman soldier who legend has it defeated a terrible giant who had been collecting toals from sailors on the Schelde River. After killing the giant Brabo cut off it’s hand and threw the hand over the river. The place where it landed is where Antwerp was built. “Ant” mean hand and “Werpen” is to throw so we were in HandThrow and loved it. (Walter is responsible for any errors or ommissions in the above).

We then went to a bar called “The 11th Commandment” which is “Thou Shalt Enjoy Beer”. I didn’t find this one very hard to comply with and we sampled Cherry beer, Rasberry beer, and several Trapist Monk brewed pints. They were all delicious and the ambiance in the bar was great, it’s filled with Madonna’s and other religious icons. IMG8IMG9We ate dinner in an underground restaurant (The Pilgrim) and then Jess and Walter drove us across the border about 50 minutes to the underwater country of the Netherlands which we’ll cover in our next entry.

The Easter Bunny did manage to find us in Zoetermeer, Netherlands he delivered gourmet chocolate eggs that were much too good to share with a badly behaved monkey like George. I did let Ali have one though…

Happy Easter,

Mark & Ali

~5,000 years in 12 hours

Published on March 26, 2005 in Travel. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Yesterday we took a bus trip to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath. The trip covered about 5,000 years of British history in about 12 hours.

We started at Windsor Castle, the Queen’s main digs. They make Buckingham Palace look like a bit of a dump by comparison, I can see why she likes to spend most of her time there. Our guide told us that the entire royal family was there for the Easter weekend however we were not invited to tea.

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We then toured the very picturesque town of Windsor where I think the highlight was this crooked tea room.

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We stopped in at an old thatch roofed pub for lunch and then on to Stonehenge.

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After the mystical Stonghenge of ~2,600 BC on to Bath which has an interesting history. The Romans built a city here in what was once a swamp after draining it. They had a temple, an amphitheatre, baths, etc., however when they left around 400 AD the drainage system deteriorated and the swamp returned. The British ‘discovered’ the place again in the 1700s and built new baths here, this time for the ‘healing’ powers of the waters. A hundred years or so later a lady complained that her basement was leaking and when they dug it up they found this:
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Anyway we are off to enjoy our last day in Britain, tomorrow we take a train through the Chunnel to Brussels and then on to Antwerp where we’ll hook up with “The Dutch”.

Cheers,

Mark & Ali

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