We also received a note from Andrew's son saying he will be between jobs soon and will be able to visit us in the near future! We are soooo excited! We talked to him on the phone via Skype and made tentative plans. Then we conversed via e-mail and Facebook and we booked tickets for him to travel to Europe to visit his step-brother in Germany and then he will come to stay with us for a week and a half!
This past weekend Andrew and I hung around the house on Saturday. We took Sammy for a nice long walk and then had an early dinner at our favorite restaurant: Woodstone in the Raaks area of town.
On Sunday we decided to drive over the Afsluitdijk to Friesland, Netherlands, which is part of the ancient area of Frisia.
After calculating the distance with google maps, we set out in the car. In the GPS we entered the town of Den Oever to ensure we would get the most direct route to the dike.
Via Wikipedia:
The Afsluitdijk (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɑf.slœyd.ˌdɛik], Frisian: Ofslútdyk; English: Enclosure Dam) is a major causeway in theNetherlands, constructed between 1927 and 1933 and running from Den Oever on Wieringen in North Holland province, to the village of Zurich in Friesland province, over a length of 32 kilometres (20 mi) and a width of 90 m, at an initial height of 7.25 m above sea-level.
It is a fundamental part of the larger Zuiderzee Works, damming off the Zuiderzee, a salt water inlet of the North Sea, and turning it into the fresh water lake of the IJsselmeer.
On the Afsluitdijk there is also a gas station, which can be reached from either direction!
After crossing, we entered the name of the town we wanted to visit first: Makkum. What a quaint little town. Knowing beforehand that most places would be closed because it was Sunday, we decided to just walk around town.
After lunch we got back in the car and headed to our next destination: Hindeloopen.
Hindeloopen is one of the towns which is included in the Eleven Cities for the Elfstedentocht.
From Wikipedia:
The Elfstedentocht [ɛɫf'steːdə(n)tɔxt] (West Frisian: Âlvestêdetocht, English: Eleven cities tour), is an almost 200 kilometres (120 mi) long skating tour which is held both as a speed skating match (with 300 contestants) and a leisure tour (with 16,000 skaters). It is held in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, leading past all eleven historical cities of the province. The tour is held at most once a year, only when the natural ice along the entire course is at least 15 centimetres (6 in) thick;,[1] sometimes on consecutive years, other times with gaps that may exceed 20 years. When the ice is suitable, the tour is announced and starts within 48 hours.
We parked the car near the marina...
Then headed to the center of town...
There is a dike protecting the town from the sea...
We saw some gravestones from Canadian and Australian soldiers who had fought in WWII.
Most of the signs were in two languages, Dutch and Frisian:
We stopped at what we thought was a little restaurant for something sweet and a cup of coffee....
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that there is a beautiful shop in the back of the restaurant and a very nice skating museum (Het Eerst Friese Schaatsmuseum www.schaatsmuseum.nl)
The owner does all the painting!
We bought a few items.....a pair of skates, and hanger for them and an old coal container which has been painted! There is a definite Scandinavian influence in the region.
We were leaving town as the sun was setting. We don't get to see the sunsets very often in Haarlem because of all the buildings....so we really enjoyed the site!
We parked the car near the marina...
We were leaving town as the sun was setting. We don't get to see the sunsets very often in Haarlem because of all the buildings....so we really enjoyed the site!
What a nice relaxing weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment