A Day at Keukenhof - Carolyn

What a great day!!!  Despite having started the day reaching for an Ipod that had fallen in a toilet (thank goodness for Dutch hygiene standards!), the day was fabulous.  Sadly, I can’t figure out how to post the full set of 172 photos I took.  Garden after garden of spring bulbs in bloom, some great garden art, and a whole series of small gardens that could be inspiration for the Wolfe Island Community Garden.  When I become a more sophisticated blogger, I’ll put a slide show up.  Until then, check out the website at Keukenhof Gardens .

Keukenhof for Kids by Georgia

There were lots of things at Keukenhof for kids.  My favorite thing was going on a swoopy climber over a pond.  It was scary-ish because if I fell I’d be very wet.  I also went across a rope bridge and up a windmill.  We went to a petting zoo and felt a sheep.  Its wool was very thick!!

Music in the Garden by Emily

On Monday we went to a flower garden called Keukenhof. It was fun. We had lunch at one of the pavilions. It was called the Wilhelmina Pavilion. Apparently they served Dutch food. I am not quite sure what the definition of Dutch food is. Mom had this kind of green slop. It turned out to be spinach and mashed potato mushed together. I had a bit and it was okay. After that we walked for a while, until we got to the Juliana Pavilion. At the Juliana Pavilion, we watched some short videos and looked at the poster things they had around. When we started walking away from that pavilion we heard music. We heard drums, horns, bells, maybe some piano music. So, we walked toward the sound. We found ourselves at the main entrance (we came through the non-main entrance). What we thought was a live band turned out to be a single machine. It was very pretty. There were people carved out of wood, and when you heard the sound of a bell, you saw them hit the bells with their stick thing. We walked around to the back to see how it worked. I used to have this music box, and to make it go you put in a long piece of paper with holes in it and turned a crank. The machine was just like that except it was a lot bigger and there were drums. The song we first heard was some kind of orchestra song. We looked on the sides of the folded up cardboard (the long pieces you put in for it to make noise) and saw some very interesting song choices. Georgia and I found it a bit weird when we saw Bad Romance on the cardboard. How exactly is a machine orchestra supposed to play a song by Lady Gaga? Anyway, when the first song was finished, the man put in a new piece of cardboard and the machine started playing Vida La Viva by Coldplay. Mom started laughing like crazy. After we walked away, told parents we wanted ice cream, looked at gardens, got ice cream, looked at more gardens, went up a windmill, sat in a wooden shoe, bought some things and walked to the non-main entrance/exit, we left.  I really like Keukenhof.  (: Emily :) 

Home for a Year

The boat has been chosen and tomorrow we sign the papers.  It's like shopping for a house, only we're trying to get the whole business done in 10 days.  Yikes! 

Check out our Home for a Year.   Carolyn

Georigia's First Post

I am happy to be in the Netherlands.  It was my first plane ride to get here.  On the plane we got served interesting food.  I watched a movie and had a hard time sleeping.  When it was time to go, I forgot my glasses on the plane.  After the plane ride, we tried to find my glasses, but we couldn’t.  So we went and got the car we rented and we came to Gauw.  In Gauw, we are staying at a cottage that is very old.  They have toys like k’nex, blocks, train tracks and a Fisher Price garage.    In Gauw we went for a walk.  We saw a bunch of houses.  They are all brick.  All of the roofs are really high and take up lots of space.  The roofs are clay tile, but we saw one made of grass thatch.  We saw some people getting vegetables from the back of a delivery truck and we also saw a bread delivery truck.  We saw lots of kids on bicycles at the school lunch break.    Boat shopping is hard because we can’t find a boat that we all agree on.  Me, Emily and Mom like the ValkKruiser, but Dad likes the Doggersbank.  I don’t really like the Doggersbank.  Today is the last day of the boat show, so hopefully we find a boat that suits us all.

The Adventure Begins

Well, we arrived safely in the rainy Netherlands, following an overnight flight that included very little sleep.  We picked up our genuine Dutch Hyundai rental car and got lost only a few times on the way to our rental cottage.  We are staying in a village of a few hundred people about a five minute drive from Sneek (pronounced Snake), a town of 33,000. 

We had a brief moment of concern following the tour of the rental cottage when we noticed that the lovely bathroom shown in the photos and clearly present in the house, did not include a toilet.  Nor is there any other door near the shower room that would suggest it might be a toilet.  It turns out, however, that if you open enough doors, you can find not only a toilet, but also a kitchen, and a sleeping closet for the heavy snorers.

Children in the cooking closet



Snorers in the sleeping closet

So far the weather has been very grey and wet, ranging from 5 degrees to about 10.  Fortunately, these little dutch towns hold their charm even in the rain.  There are bicycles everywhere, brick cobbled streets, pedestrian shopping avenues, canals all over the place, and outdoor restaurant patios set up with inviting looking sofas and candles or small fires.  We have encountered very few people who don't speak English and are having no trouble finding what we need.  We're also very happy to find that prices are pretty comparable to those at home with the exception of wine, which is extremely cheap!

 

 

Hello from this town called Sneek!

Hi! We are in Sneek! Actually we have been on Sneek for three days. We came to Sneek to go to this boat show where we are going to buy our boat. We aren't really living in Sneek, our rented cottage is in a village called Gauw which is a six minute drive away from Sneek. Our cottage is quite nice. It is made of brick. Femke and Hein are our land people. I have not actually seen Hein, only Femke. She seems quite nice. So, today we went to the De Valk showroom(De Valk is one of the companies that has boats we could buy) to look for a boat. We looked at a bunch of boats. The one I would really like is called Valkkruiser. This is the link for it: The Valkkruiser 

Unfortunately, it is about double our budget. We might be going to Ireland to get a boat, if we can't decide on one here. The boat in Ireland is a Valkkruiser too, but it is not new and shiny.

:)Emily(: is very excited to be in another country across an ocean!