A standard dutch shoe store
The coolest urinal in the world!
A dutch parking building
On the Friday we visited Alkmar - a small village that has a highly touristy, but nevertheless interesting cheese fair on Fridays. They have lots of guys running in circles carrying cheese for no apparent reason. Because the weather wasn't the best, we spent most of the time trying to not have an eye poked out by the millions of people milling around carrying umbrellas. After buying a bit of cheese, eating some raw hering in tradional Dutch style (see photo) and having a look around, we then carried on up North to cross the longest dyke in Holland. It is about 30 something km long, with a few parking spots on the way - one of which has a few pictures and the story of how it was built etc.
Kerstin eating herring the tradional way
Carrying cheese in circles
Carrying on with our round trip, we visited Urk - a really small fishing village where they are still quite religious (all the girls have to wear skirts etc), and apparently they often still wear traditional Dutch clothes (although we didn't really see any). They were having some kind of show day with the fire brigade, so all the kids were having water fights with the high pressure hoses - looked like it would have been a lot of fun if it hadn't been so cold... The other interesting feature of the town - most of the men had little sailing ship errings (a sign that they were fishermen).
On the Saturday we visiting a park that was like a 'little Holland' - it had everything that was supposed to be typically Dutch. The highlight was visiting a windmill where they 'made' linseed oil. The old guy was not only great as far as explaining how everything works, but could do it in at least 4 languages. Watching how basically everything that happened in there was powered by the wind and seeing just how much power there is in the wind was really fascinating.
Could be any street in Holland...
After that we went to Zandvoort (guess why??) which is normally a very popular beach resort (when it's not so damn cold).
We discovered that we are actually Dutch not English
On the Sunday we did as the Dutch do - we went cycling! We went to a big wildlife reserve and hired bikes for the day. Actually one of the highlights was going past the modern form of the Dutch windmill - massive wind turbines that always look close until you try and go up to one...
We then had to go home :-(
Skipping into the sunset
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