Beautiful Holland

Well, I'm baaaaack! I've spend 2 days unpacking, taking it easy and getting used to America-time again.
High time to get a blog going about my time in Holland, so here's a little impression from the 3.5 weeks I spend over there!

I had no troubles at all getting there by the way, my little vaccination-card was checked and accepted everywhere, and checking in and going through customs went really fast and without any problems.
Same for Reykjavik, and in A'dam nobody asked for anything at all!
So, easy peasy, besides having to wear a face-mask pretty much non-stop from entering Portland Airport to getting of the train in Den Helder! Yikes!

Of course there was a little getting together coffee-and-pie party upon my arrival, and a welcome-back dinner the next day:



Unfortunately Lotte couldn't make it since she'd tested positive for Covid on the day before I arrived and had to go in quarantine for 10 days!
She'd had only one vaccination and caught it at a wedding of a friend 10 days later ..

As usual, I stayed with my mom in her downtown apartment:

                                 

  

From where you have a great view of the weekly Farmer- and Beachcomber-markets ..

I was thrilled to discover that the yearly Summer Fair (which was cancelled last year due to the virus), did take place this year and right when I was visiting too!
I really don't care much about the rides, but I like the atmosphere and, most importantly, the 'gebakkraam' where they sell 'oliebollen', one of my favorite dutch pastries!

 

We got us a bunch to share with my sister, and her beau Johan, when they came for a visit one Saturday afternoon.

They were delicious!

And of course I'd planned a visit with my best friend Irene:



We drove to the beach-town of Callentsoog, about 15 minutes from where I was staying, had lunch on the terrace of one of the restaurants, and talked .. and talked .. and talked ..



The weather was absolutely beautiful so afterward, still talking, we took a peak at the beach:

 

And drove back to Den Helder where we enjoyed a delicious ice(cream)-coffee at Nogal Wiedus, a fun beach cafe/restaurant right on the 'dike' in Huisduinen.

                           

I really wasn't very interested in going places in the rest of Holland this visit, but instead enjoyed some sightseeing with the family in the vicinity of Den Helder

One Sunday morning we walked over to Willemsoord, a large former dockyard of the Royal Netherlands Navy and now a maritime museum, housing the Dutch Navy Museum and the Nationaal Reddingmuseum Dorus Rijkers and  a variety of restaurants, bars and cafes.

After a leisurely stroll around the old docks and buildings we sat down at one of the restaurants and enjoyed a nice lunch together.

As the weather was still warm and sunny we could sit outside on the terrace again. I forgot to take pictures but it looked somewhat like this:

Another town I visited with my mom, sister and Lotte, my niece who was by than 'out of quarantine' and eager to go somewhere, was Alkmaar. 

Only about a half hour south of Den Helder its's a beautiful old city and especially known for it's weekly cheese markets during the summer.
Unfortunately, due to Covid, they were cancelled for this year but we still enjoyed strolling through the old, cobblestone streets while admiring the beautiful old houses along the canals ..



We did some shopping and scored some clothes. These three were tired of standing around waiting for me to try something on, and decide to take a break on the merchandise ..

On another outing with my sister and Johan, we checked out a nature reserve near the The Hondsbossche Zeewering, which is a 5.5 km long dike near Petten , at a place where a storm surge in the Middle Ages broke through the original dunes.
The current body of the dike has been there since 1880 and has been raised and widened several times since then.

In addition to the dike, the current thought of protecting the land from the sea and at the same time creating a larger habitat for all kind of wildlife, is to follow a more 'natural' approach by restoring/adding more/wider dunes to the existing ones.

For some odd reason, and despite several attempts, none of us seem to quite 'discover' the exact area of these newly created dunes but it'll look somewhat like this area in a small village close by, where they created a 'lagune' instead.



We stopped for a while at another bird-reserve where a large colony of sterns are raising their offspring at the moment. Talking about noisy!!

On our way back we spotted a car/trunk sale, a particular interest of Johan, so we did some browsing until dark clouds rolled in and we decided to hightail it to the car and back home.

                                                          

I think it was that evening that we went for dinner to this chinese/indonesian restaurant.
I never miss the opportunity to eat there when I'm in Holland. The american/chinese restaurants are very different, and I always crave the (for me) 'real' stuff!

It was as delicious as always!

My favorite niece Riet lives a 5 minute car-drive away from my mom's place in Huisduinen, and my mom and I visited her several times.
She has a beautiful house and a wonderful garden, perfect for enjoying coffee together in the morning!

:

And this next picture was taken on the day of her mother's 94th birthday, when we collected her from the elderly home she lives in and brought her to Riet's, for a birthday pie followed by a tasty lunch:

And on one of those coffee-mornings Riet invited us for coffee at 'Nogal Wiedus', that little restaurant I went to with my friend Irene, and afterwards for lunch at the next door 'Storm Paviljon', a little further on that same dike.

We raised a glass as well!

It sure looks like we did nothing else but eat drink and be merry, which is totally true, with some short, little outings to keep things interesting.
Another one of those trips brought us to the island of Texel, only a 20 minute ferry-ride away.

               

I've been there many times and it's always a fun place to visit, but this time it was even more special since my youngest niece Babet scored a job there, and is now living on the island as well.



Her sister, my oldest niece Anouk, went with us since she hadn't visited since she moved as well.
On arrival, we had lunch together:

 .... after which she gave us a tour of the hotel she's working at and showed us her room.
It's that little window in the roof there, right above the sign for the restaurant!

                                 

Since we brought the car over on the ferry we decided to drive around the Island for some sight-seeing.
First stop, de Slufter, a unique area that has an open connection with the North Sea. After a number of failed attempts to turn it into an agricultural polder, it was decided at the beginning of the 20th century to leave the inlet open.
The Slufter area consists of a system of creeks that is sometimes flooded after a storm.

The largest part of De Slufter is managed as a breeding and resting area for birds. Only the southern part is freely accessible.
Many birds nest in the northern part, such as eider, shelduck and avocet. Marine animals such as crabs, shrimps and flatfish live in the Sluftergeul.

From there we drove to the northern most point of the Island, to the village of the Cocksdorp, where you'll find the Texel lighthouse standing guard in the dunes just outside the village:

Anouk is an avid photographer (just like her aunt), and often left us for higher/better grounds to take the best shots ..

                                                

I forgot to mention that, although sunny and fairly warm, it was very, very windy that day, as you can see at this wind-blown picture!

OK, next up, the town of Oudeschild, the only village on Texel that is located directly by the sea. A pretty little town and the fishing harbor of the island:

We strolled around the harbor for a little, saw a shrimp boat come in, and took a selfie on the steps of the dike that sits between the town and the harbor:



The old houses along the dike are beautifully restored and are dating from the 1600's!

 

After a nice dinner of 'patat and kroketten' (or a 'fricadel' in my case), we said our goodbyes and parted ways.
I wouldn't see Babet anymore before I left. It was fun to spend some time with her and her sister, they're so grown up nowadays, no little girls anymore ..

Wow, I can't believe we did all this in such short of a time! And there's still one more trip I have to mention.
The last Sunday I was there we went to the butterfly garden in Waarland, about 30 minutes south of Den Helder.

Situated in several glass houses this is a wonderful little tropical butterfly and bird garden.

While walking through the place you'll spot many different butterflies, which ones you'll see depend a little on the season, but there are always plenty around.
If you can find them, that is ..

                      

Dishes with fruit are set out to bring the butterflies out of hiding and more into the open ..

                                  

In the end we spotted at least 10 or 12 different ones!     

               
These are the pupa, some of which are as colorful as the butterfly they'll become:

              

    Besides the butterflies there's a nice variety of tropical flowers and plants ..                                                             

One of the greenhouses even houses some birds:

One of the latest additions to this venue is an indoor put-put course and despite the heat and humidity (it was another sunny day) we played 12 holes:

  

Lots of fun!!

And there you have it! Almost 4 weeks in a nutshell! Well .. a rather large nutshell, I would say, it turned out to be a longer story than I thought!

For my travels back to the States I needed a negative Covid test result, so I had a fast (free!) antigen-test done in town. The result was e-mailed to me within 30 minutes and was negative, so I was good to go!

                                           

A last dinner was organized at our favorite pizzeria Costa:

            

(who has moved from it's old location to a new one, at the aforementioned Willemsoord, which is not really an improvement, as we all agree on):

 

And before I knew it, I was sitting in the train towards Schiphol ..

The beautiful country side of north-Holland, flashing by me one last time ..

Before arriving at Schiphol/ A'dam Airport, where my plane to Reykjavik in Iceland was already waiting ..

Both flights back were uneventful and even smoother than the ones to Europe, and all travel documents (vaccine-card, test-results, health declarations, green card) were inspected and accepted.
James was there to pick me up from the airport (hey, you never know ..) and after some Sushi for dinner I could finally crash in my very own bed!

All in all, I had a great time, but it's good to be home!