Dutch Letters: Tom's Visit

At the North Sea

My brother Tom visited for two weeks in November to watch Grant's musical and celebrate Grant's birthday. It was his second visit to Holland, so he spent most of the time around Wassenaar, going to the market, riding bikes to the beach and walking the dog. As you can see from the pictures, the weather was cool but it didn't rain too much.

We visited the local tulip farm. To buy tulip bulbs, you got a bag, fill it with bulbs of the variety of your choice then pay 25 cents a bulb.

This tulip farm forced tulips so they could sell flowers year round. These large coolers kept the temperature around 9 degrees centigrade. When the outside temperature was 9 or less, they shut down the coolers and just opened the doors. On this day, it was definitely below 9.

They had racks and racks of bulbs.

After we bought all those bulbs, I enlisted the master gardener to plant them. Graber helped too.

No visit to Holland is complete without going to the weekly market. Tom & I ate kibbeling, small chucks of fried fish. These came right out of the fryer and were delicious. We were impressed with this vendor's trailer -- very professional.

The entrance to the Louwman Museum, a building full of 250 cars of all types and ages.

One of Elvis' Cadillacs

A car from the Godfather movie.

Another Godfather movie car. This one had a flat tire. How does that happen in a museum? These guys were going to put on the spare (why would a movie car have a spare?) while they fixed the original. But the hubcap didn't fit on the spare. We didn't stick around to see how they solved this dilemma. Note the can of WD 40 in the foreground -- the universal mechanic's tool.

Yea Shell!

We rode out bikes to a scenic overlook in the Dunes, the nature area that borders the North Sea. Here we are looking towards Den Haag. This strip of park runs the length of the coast line and is great for biking, running, birding and hiking.

One day we took the train to Gouda (pronounced Howda). Founded in the 1200's most people know the town for its cheese -- 60% of all Dutch cheese is produced in this area. It is also well known for its Strooopwafels, two thin waffles with caramel syrup in between. They are sold everywhere, but the ones from Gouda are considered the best.

The Red Lion windmill in Gouda. Built in 1727, it is a working windmill producing milled grain.

The inside of the windmill was open to visitors -- it looked pretty much like you'd expect a working windmill to look….dusty, bags of grain everywhere, spare parts laying around.

After the grain was milled, they put it in this bathtub to scoop it out and fill the bags. So maybe the windmill is not 100% authentic.

The store where you could buy the grains milled at the Red Lion. We bought organic corn meal to make sweet potato corn meal muffins.

The Catharina Gasthuis Museum. Built in the 1500's it was formerly a hospital.

The hospital dispensary

Another entrance to the Gasthuis.

The town hall in the center of the town square. Supposedly, Gouda has the largest market square in the Netherlands, probably to support all the cheese markets.

Our visit was in November, so Sinterklaas was in the country. Here a Zwarte Piet runs a game for kids in the square. They were trying to throw a carrot into the wooden shoe.

The inside of the St. Janskerk -- the longest church in The Netherlands.

The church as 42 windows that were made in the 1500's. They survived the reformation when the church switched from Catholic to Protestant and they survived WWII. For the war, they were disassembled piece by piece and hidden in the dunes in North Holland.