OK, as promised here's some of the sightseeing, visiting and other activities we had going on in between the 'work' we did.

The city of Den Helder, where we stayed, has a lot of activities and events going on during the summer and since my mom lives smack in the middle of town, we only had to take the elevator down from her appartment, to step right into all the fun. Or we could even watch it from above, from her balcony …

    

A few of the events, during the weeks we were there, besides the regular Saturday market, were a very fun parade/street theater in honor of the grand opening of the beautiful new library ...

                                              

... a shanty-choir weekend and a music weekend, 

 

      

... an Indonesian night market, 

... and the start of the summer-long ‘beach-comber’ weekends.
A rather special event is the ‘avond-vierdaagse’ (the ‘evening-4 day’), a walking event where you can choose to walk 5, 10 or 15 km, four evenings in a row, along a different route each night.

 

At the end of the last night, everybody gathers at a certain point and walks the last kilometer or so together, while being hailed by family and friends and covered with flowers, candy and what-not … 

North of Den Helder you’ll find a string of small Islands, the first one only a 15 minute ferry ride away, called Texel.

One beautiful morning we took an early morning boat and rented a couple of bikes on arrival. We toured the beautiful biking paths for several hours, through the dunes and pine forest of the west side of the island, and came back amidst the meadows and along the man made dike of the east side.

It’s such a gorgeous place, I think it would be my favorite place to live if I would be in Holland!

 

By the way, how about this solar panel? 

                                                

Or this toilet?

    

Brave bird ...

Cute bird ...

South of Den Helder, dunes stretch out along the whole west coast of the country and a pretty road leads you all the way down south.

We took a drive on a sunny day and visited a few small, picturesque, seaside towns, took a couple of walks along the beaches and relaxed on some of the terraces.

At the end of the day, we watched the shrimp boats trying their luck while the sun was setting in the Northsea ...

 

And eating one of my favorite dishes, (dutch) pancakes (with bacon and syrup)!

It doesn’t get much better than that!

One of the summer events I mentioned before had our very special attention; botanical garden ‘The Oranjerie’, where I used to work, was celebrating its yearly ‘Japan day’.

Me working for this garden, was the very reason James and I met, since they decided to build a Japanese garden to commemorate 200 year trading between Holland and Japan, and sent my boss and me to a 2-week landscape seminar in Kyoto, where James was attending as well.

“The rest is history”, as they say … we even had our wedding reception here!

The garden has by now, after 15 years, grown into its full glory. It’s beautiful …

                                      

We definitely caused a stir showing up unannounced, and surprised the heck out of my boss Rob, the PR man of the botanical garden Pieter, and his wife Angenita, who catered our wedding and Wiebe, our class-guide/mentor in Japan, and his wife Norico, who were also attending. What fun!

Fast food, the Japanese way, it doesn't only have to taste good but looks are just as important, even the 'container' it comes in!

     

We also went to Bunne, in the north-east part of the country to visit my best friend Irene and her significant other, Eric, for a super 'gezellig' weekend.

The weather couldn't have been any better and neither the company!

I made some pics but unfortunately had my settings mixed up again so they're all 'fuzzy' again, oh well ...

They have a gorgeous back yard:

Like I said, the weather was perfect, so we took a drive through the beautiful countryside of two provinces in the north-east of the country, named Drenthe and Groningen.


 

How about this tiny and awfully steep bridge over one of the small canals?

In the afternoon we set up the BBQ and spent a wonderful evening eating, drinking and chatting like old friends do ...

We visited my aunt Ma, who had given us the use of her little car to drive around in, and my niece Riet, who live in Huisduinen, one of those quaint, tiny sea-side towns just outside Den Helder ...

... and we saw my sister and nieces almost on a daily occasion ...

Gel nails anyone?

Coffee time!

I’ve been very bad at taking pictures during this trip, I guess I took a little vacation of it too …

We had many meals together, but I only got pictures of one of the last one’s, and only because my niece Anouk took some!

The dinner took place at her house and was kind of special, since James had never had this before. It’s called ‘gourmetten’, and you basically prepare your own mini-meals, while choosing the (prepared and chopped up) meats, vegetables, spices etc. that you fancy and cook them as you like it.

It makes for a very relaxed, easy going,  fun and delicious meal!

Well, that was it … 7 weeks in a nutshell … boy, did it go fast! 

We’re back for 3 weeks now and it’s almost if we never went …

But I guess we did, according to these pictures, and it was fun, and we will do it again, sometime … in the meantime, we’ve moved to Mississippi for a couple of weeks, and I’ll tell you all about that in the next blog.

See ya!

 
Sunset from the dike at Huisduinen ...

 

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