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Category: The Netherlands

Vlieland

Vlieland

As promised, some more photos of our stay on the Dutch island Vlieland 🙂

Paul bought a camera just before we got there (he found a great deal on a second-hand Canon EOS 30D, and a really nice 28mm f/1.8 lens to go with it), so of course he had to try it out. Below you can see him with his new camera, and the other one is one of the results 🙂 it’s great for portraits!

The photo below is a very wide angle photo of the sky over the Wadden sea…

The day after the wedding was a really nice sunny day, and we went for a walk on the beach. The beaches on the North Sea side of the island are sandy and very wide…

It wasn’t quite warm enough to swim, but it was great for “pootjebaden”. Paddling in English, but that word just doesn’t have the same feel to it! Pootjebaden literally means footie-bathing.

The dunes there are in constant movement, and the patterns can be really nice:

One side of Vlieland consists of a 20 square kilometre area of sand/beach, nicknamed the Sahara of the North 😉 but officially called the Vliehors. Unfortunately you can’t always access this area, as it’s used by the military for shooting practice (I guess they pretend to be in the desert!). We only made it as far as the “DO NOT ENTER” signs, but on weekends you can usually access beyond this signs. There is another way of getting there, the Vliehors Express, a funny kind of 4WD truck used for excursions to this area. You can see it in the photo below (on the left). The really cool thing of this vehicle is its tires! Every year there is a poetry contest, and the winning poem is engraved on one of its tires… you can see the result below, how cool is that?? The full poem reads: “Volg nu voor heel even de woorden langs de waterlijn. Laat hier je grootste zorgen slechts natte voeten zijn” which translates as “Follow for a little while words along the water line. Let here your greatest worries be wet feet”

After our nice beach walk, it was time for a nice beer/ice tea and a “broodje kroket” at the beach pavilion, where you can sit outside but sheltered behind glass panels – really nice!

That evening we returned to the beach to watch the sunset. We were very excited about this, as we hadn’t seen a sunset for quite a while 🙂 The photos below illustrate our different approaches to photography… Paul took this very serene pastel coloured photo of us on the beach, while I took one with the sunset in it, using flash… I have to admit that Paul’s photo is nicer though 😉 but maybe that’s just because I am grinning so much in the other one!

As we watched the sunset, a beautiful two-master left the harbour, which is just around the corner from where we were. We joked that it would be perfect if it could just sail right in front of the setting sun… and guess what, it did exactly that!

It was beautiful! There were some boys swimming as well… What a magical sunset, this was my favourite moment of our time on the island.

The next day was rainy, and we stayed in the apartment that we shared with my parents and my sister. Paul had some work to do on his talk, and the rest of us was reading and watching tv and falling asleep 🙂 A nice lazy day! We all went out for dinner, and afterwards the weather cleared. We decided to bike to the other side of the island to walk through the forest there. Originally there was no forest on the island, it was planted so that the trees would hold the sand. It was very difficult to get trees to grow here, but they succeeded eventually. Before they did this, the island was constantly changing shape as the sand was blown around, and one village was lost to the sea.

Anyway, these photos are taken on our bike trip there, it was about 8 km away. You can’t cycle much further than that, the island is very small! In the first photo you can see the typical Dutch “mushroom” which shows you the way 🙂 you can find them everywhere in the country on cycle/walking paths.

Near the forest, we found some tiny frogs! You can see how small it is in the first photo, on Paul’s hand. I hate frogs (due to a traumatic experience as a child 😉 ) but I would almost call this one “cute”….

We didn’t take many photos in the forest, as it was too dark there. We were there around sunset, the sky was beautiful! The second photo is a really nice birdwatching hut on the Wadden sea side of the island. Here you can see the mud flats that appear at low tide…

We left Vlieland on the next day… we really didn’t want to leave, we had such a great time there. On these islands you feel so far away from everything, and life is simple and fun. We’d really like to come back for a week or so next year! Before getting on the ferry, we had coffee with my parents, with some bitterballen 🙂 Bart, Kaya and Mare were taking the same ferry, and Kaya took this really nice picture of all of us on the ferry.

Photos from Canada will have to wait a while unfortunately! We are planning to leave on a camping trip to the Lofoten tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll come back with LOTS of photos. Paul’s parents are coming to visit us right after we come back, and we’ll also go to Trondheim for a few days with them. I hope to find some time in between to update the blog!!

♥ ♥ Bart & Kaya ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ Bart & Kaya ♥ ♥

My oldest brother Bart got married to Kaya on 10 July! The wedding took place on a Dutch island called Vlieland. It takes almost 2 hours to reach the island by ferry, and you can’t bring your car. The island is quite small, with only one village. Everyone gets around on bikes, and the island has a great holiday atmosphere. There are 5 similar islands (Terschelling is the one “next door”), and Bart and Kaya have spent a lot of their holidays on them. Vlieland is their favourite island, and that’s why they chose to get married there! Perfect choice, also because this was the only island that I hadn’t visited yet 😉

We all stayed in group accommodation which worked out really nicely! Everyone arrived the evening before the wedding, so we all had dinner together and we did some geocaching (a sort of treasure hunt using a gps) in the evening. Below you can see the ladies (plus my dad) team before and after finding the cache 🙂

The next morning (the big day) we woke up to rain. And not just a little bit, no it was POURING. It stayed like that for hours too… Luckily the town hall was only a short walk from our accommodation! I didn’t take any photos of the actual ceremony as there were a lot of people taking pictures already. The first photo below is taken just before we left to the town hall (the groom with his daughter Mare), and the second photo when we walked back – Mare and my mum are having a nice “OOOOO” conversation 😉

We came back to our accommodation to have some cake & champagne!

Mare seems keen on the champagne too 😉 (don’t worry, it was a child-friendly champagne without alcohol!) And a portrait of Mare and my mum 🙂

Then it was time for speeches! There were several, including a long emotional one by Kaya’s mum (first photo) and also a long one by Bart and Kaya themselves, with some tears but also a lot of laughter 🙂

Paul took this nice panorama of everyone listening to the speech by Kaya’s mum…

Then there was time for presents, though most people had given their presents earlier so they didn’t have to take it to the island and back 😉

Here are two family portraits, first one with my parents, my sister, my 2 brothers and me, and then one including Kaya and Paul 🙂

And a photo with my mum, Mare, Paul and me…

After the speeches, Bart and Kaya had arranged rental bikes for everyone, and we cycled to the other side of the island. Bart and Kaya had a special “freight bike”, see the photo below. We cycled almost 10 km, and we had the wind against us for most of it – poor Bart!! 😉

We had a very nice lunch in a small restaurant there. After lunch, Bart and Kaya went off with the wedding photographer/friend 🙂 to get their official portraits. We went for a little walk on the beach before returning to the accommodation where we had a big bbq in the evening. The place we stayed had a big garden with a fireplace, and we sat around until late at night. It was a great day! For the official photos, keep an eye out on Bart & Kaya’s weblog. UPDATE: they can all be found here 🙂

We stayed on Vlieland for a few more days, I’ll show some photos of that in my next post! It’s hard to find time for the blog though, now that we have a *real* summer here in Tromsø, with temperatures of 25 degrees 🙂 Quite unusual, but really nice! We’re making the most of it 🙂

Dutcher than Dutch: De Rijp

Dutcher than Dutch: De Rijp

Last week we were in the Netherlands for Sinterklaas, and we decided to go on a little trip. We had heard from Bart and Kaya about a B&B; called “Polderhuisje” – a little wooden house on its own island in a village called “De Rijp”. De Rijp is a very Dutch looking village in between lots of drained land – you can’t get it much “Dutcher” than there, and the good thing is that it’s largely left alone by tourists.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and we were lucky enough to have a cold but very sunny winter day with beautiful light. These are some photos of the little house – very beautiful both on the inside and on the outside. I wish it was for sale, would love to live in it 😉

The weather was so nice that we couldn’t stay inside for very long. After a quick cup of tea we left for a walk. We walked from the Rijp to Schermerhorn on the dyke. In the first photo (below) you can see one of the old pump-buildings, now in use as a glass art gallery. 

There were quite a lot of people around, mostly walking their dogs, because of the nice weather. I do like the big skies in the Netherlands!

If you enlarge the photo of the small windmill below, you can see that Paul managed to capture the movement! 🙂

The light was getting better and better – very yellow as the sun was setting. 

The post below is an old border post. In the photo on the right you can see birds flying in a “V”. There were so many birds there! Most of this area is nature reserve and full of birds. Sometimes they would all fly up at the same moment, incredible to watch the sky so full of birds! Unfortunately we didn’t get any good photos of that. 

Sunset… the photo on the right is taken from Schermerhorn.

We left Schermerhorn at sunset, it was beautiful. There are three mills in a row there, nicely silhouetted against the sky. Paul took the photo on the right of a couple cycling, it’s a bit blurred but I think it shows how magical the evening light was!

The three mills… The one on the right is a bit further away and called the Haviksmolen. The sky was very orange when we got there, such a stunning view!

Paul also took a panorama image of this mill:

 

The photo on the left is Paul taking those mill photos, in the moonlight! The photo on the right is taken when we finally made it to Graft, we had to walk in the dark for the last part of our walk. I wanted to take a photo of this nice building, but of course a car drove past right when I was taking it…

When we got back to de Rijp, we found a nice restaurant to have dinner. We ate lots of interesting food, including deer and pheasant! What a nice end to a wonderful day…

The next day was unfortunately cold and grey… We walked around De Rijp for a while. It’s a beautiful village, with many bridges (the one in the first photo is only wide enough for walking, not for cars!) and wooden houses on the water. 

I have also turned our walk and visit to De Rijp into a google map. You can click on the placemarks to see the photos, so you can join us for a virtual walk 🙂

View Larger Map

For my family: I haven’t done anything wi
th the Sinterklaas photos yet. I do have a photo of Mare (my little niece) and me, for the Mare-fans 🙂 We spent Saturday with Bart and Kaya, and went for a nice walk with Mare. She’s great fun, laughs a lot, starts to wave and talk now too.

That’s all for now! I’m back in Norwich, for the last time, which is quite strange. I will be back a few times next year, but I am not keeping my room anymore. Paul is arriving in England in a week (on my birthday 🙂 ), I’m looking forward to our Christmas break! I already bought myself a nice gift: a new lens for my camera 🙂 It arrived this morning, I’m planning to go to the Christmas market in town to take some photos there. So hopefully more photos soon!