Claire - out and about (Dec 07 - May 08): Weekend in the Netherlands

Cherilyn and I decided to go to Zeeland (the province after which our country was named!) and so we set off in the morning. Of course we went via Schiphol to collect a couple of Venti Starbucks lattes.

Now, this is where GPS Bonnie let us down. We weren’t aware that there was both a region called Zeeland and a small town called Zeeland within the Netherlands. Well, now we are. We GPS’d to the small town before realizing that this wasn’t the famous Zeeland after all (and nothing was open since it was Sunday other than this little Chinese restaurant we sat in for an hour and didn’t see a single other customer).

So Cherilyn placed an SOS call to one of the Dutchies she worked with last year (Harry) and he googled a few things for us and gave us advice on what we should do with the remainder of our day. He delighted in informing us that we were over 200km from the sea (despite our intention to visit the Dijks which keep the sea off of the Netherlands) but then did give us a few ideas of towns that were nearby.

First we went to Den Bosch, which is actually called ‘s Hertogenbosch, but is called Den Bosch for obvious reasons. There we saw a big huge cathedral which was beautiful, but we didn’t go in. We took a few photos outside with my new camera (woohoo!) and some of them looked superimposed.

We also found caramel milkshakes!!!!! Quite possibly the only place in the Netherlands to have them – its usually just Strawberry, Banana, Chocolate and Vanilla.

Then we headed back towards home. It was nearing sunset, so we decided to see if we could go somewhere pretty to take some sunset pics (and really test out this new camera). So we input ‘Zaanse Schans’ into the GPS. Cherilyn had been told about this place last time she was here but never went there. So GPS Bonnie instructed us to Zaanse Schans, but unfortunately the route was via an invisible bridge. We arrive at this ‘bridge’ to find that it is still being built (geez, that GPS is really up-to-date!). So we get it to recalculate and it’s a 10k drive to go around! I see why they want this bridge…

So Zaanse Schans is this cute little Dutch village, built for tourists, to give an idea of what the Netherlands was like back in the day when everyone wore clogs. We saw a million clogs, including this really big one.

Zaanse Schans is also the home of this questionable monument – I’m taking submissions/votes on what you think he is doing. Either comment or email me and let me know what you think! Cherilyn and I had our own ideas….. and just note that from front on, it looks a little more questionable than it does from this angle.