Netherlands 6

The last day we packed up camp and headed to our new home Het Loo Palace (then I decided it would be too much work to clean so we came back to our humble abode in Hamburg). The gardens were great, a strong representation of man's dominance over nature. I joked with Ted that we should do a big picture of Elvis (the King) in our front yard lawn to show the American contemporary version of Het Loo's garden design.

Netherlands 5 Keukenhof

Keukenhof is the display gardens of all the bulbs ever created I think. It was amazing. I thought it would be too early to see much of anything besides daffodils but I was wrong. More than half was in full bloom and with the forsythia and cherry blossoms it was just breath taking. I am still kicking myself for not having gone earlier in the week when there would have been less people. Aubrie got a new camera for her birthday and kept saying "Oh this is so beautiful just one more picture!" The girls had fun at the petting zoo and the zip line as well. Old fashion windmills, woodenshoes, and feilds of tulips-you can't get any more Dutch than this!

Netherlands-5 Easter

The Easter bunny visited our camp ground this year. You can see the girls excitment over their Easter egg hunt on this clip. Luckily no big scary bunnies lap to sit on this year!

Netherlands -4

On this day we visited Madurodam, where there were acres of miniture Dutch buildings. The girls loved the Seasame Street play area. We met up with the Sterri's, who now live in The Hague and had a wonderful day visiting with them. Andres and Rebecca Sterri know 5 languages! (some better than others but still.. Wow!)

Netherlands day 3 continued

We spent the evening in Geithoorn, advertised to tourists as Holland's Venice, but in my opinion way better than Venice. The village was built around the canal system and all the wonderfully well manicured homes have access to the canal and many use a boat as their sole means of transportation. I think it would be a blast to go to the grocery store by means of wisper boat. We rented a boat for only 15 euro's. Aubrie and I both tried driving it and only hit the edge a few times. ;) The canal lead us to a big open lake that was once a peat bog. The original settelers cut the peat out and dried it then used the peat bricks for fuel to heat their homes. I could totally retire here in Geithoorn it was so beautiful!

Netherlands-3

Our third day we headed back to Lelystad to see the big ship Batavia. It was built recently but after the 1629 version of a Dutch East Indies Trading Company ship. The girls had great climbing around in it and our tour guide informed us how the crew would use rope to wipe with after using the commode and the rope would get dipped into the see to be sanatized by the salty water between uses. Thank you Dear God for putting me in the time period I am now, post toilet paper! The museum is currently building another 17th century war ship that was pretty cool to see how they are making it.

Netherlands-2

Day 2 we headed to Lelystad to the Nieuw Land Poldermuseum to learn about how the Netherlands is largley below sea level and how the people were tired of being flooded so decided to build a giant dike/dam (?) across the Zuider see and created land where it was once ocean. Here's us in the car talking about it, and a kiss for you Grandma! Aubrie loved the clip we saw of the men walking across the new land that was solid (mucky) mud, trying to build canals so the water would drain and the land become usuable for crops-which it did!

Wind mills are all over the Netherlands and Germany. Only they look like this now.
This house is beautiful and I made Ted turn around to take a picture of it. It has a thatched roof with this architetural element over the gabeled window and traditional roof tiles as well. The combined roofing materials look great together.

The Netherlands-1

Over Easter break we decided to go camping in The Netherlands to see all the tulips. We had a great time and it only rained twice! We are all so sun deprived it was impossible not to be in a good mood when the sun was out. First up on our agenda was the Van Gogh museum. Aubrie has started to really enjoy drawing and had a great time doing the scavendure hunt through the museum. She has started to pay attention to her own brush strokes now after talking about how Van Gogh did his. Next was a canal cruise through Amsterdam. Not real exciting but it allowed Ted (and us) to get a feel of the cities architecture without us having to hike all around. It was fun to go past Ann Franke's place and see all the house boats.
We ate traditional Dutch style pancakes for dinner. Germany, France, Czech and now the Netherlands all have a take on the pancake and all are different from American pancakes! The Dutch were quite a bit like French Crepes only the things you want to eat with it are mixed into the batter before it is cooked. I had ham, onions and tomatoes with mine while Ted's was with peanutbutter, onions and some other stuff. I want to learn to cook more food from around the world! Here's a cute pic of the girls on lizard statues at this park by the restaurant. Kaitlan cam be such a pill.