Catching Up With Family in Holland

After our adventure in Norway we went to Holland to relax a bit and to catch up with the extended family. We got there in time to celebrate a double birthday party so we got to see the whole extended family.

We were also there just in time to see the end of Delfsail which is a big festival in the town of Delfzijl where big and old sailing ships come into the port. The last one happened 7 years ago so there’s a big party with food and drink and people can go on board a lot of the ships to check them out. I even found one guy dressed up in traditional wooden clogs.

We got a nice surprise present from everyone when they organised for us to go on a trip around Delfzijl in one of the tall ships. Normally the ship sails between Holland, the Canary Islands to the Caribbean and back to Holland and teaches young people how to sail. And how to not kill each other while living in such close quarters (they told us that this was one of the hardest things to do).

After our sailing trip we went around sampling some traditional Dutch food like stroopwafels, which are basically super thin waffles with a layer of hot syrup sandwiched in between.

After catching up with everyone we spent a couple of days in Amsterdam checking out canals, historical buildings and the Rijksmuseum.

We didn’t see Anne Frank House as we had seen it before, but it must’ve become insanely popular since we were last there as the line stretched down through the nearby square and around the side of the church next to it.

There’s also a lot of wonky houses in Amsterdam where the top seems like it’s going to fall forwards. But it’s not because the builders had a few too many drinks, but so that they could winch up furniture through the front windows and not damage the furniture on the way up.

There’s also a ridiculous number of bikes in Amsterdam. There’s a huge double decker bike parking lot in front of the train station, as well as bikes chained to every single lamppost and fence railing throughout the city. I’ve never seen this many bikes in my life.

It was a short (but good) trip to Holland, we definitely want to come back again and spend some riding around in the lush green countryside full of windmills.

A big thank you to Alie, Beeko, Marjon, Berdien, Rutger & Priscilla for taking us out and showing us a good time!