Day 14: Home, sweet home!

Inside the airport they had a mini-Rijkmuseum, complete with paintings! Also, a library. I've never seen a library in an airport before. I heartily approve.

On the plane I watched the Lego Movie, Emma (with Gwyneth Paltrow) and Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate! Wow, that was a good production!

Here's a tiny little iceberg in the middle of the ocean.

 

And, finally, back in North America! Canada, to be precise. We arrived about 7:00 in the evening, and still had to drive back home. My mom and I slept. My poor dad had to drive the whole way.

Thus ends the journey! It was an absolutely amazing trip. I can't wait to go back to Holland sometime! Hopefully sometime in the nearish future.

Live long and prosper!

Day 13: Sights to remember

Finally, here are days 13 and 14!

Day 13 was mostly meandering around the country. We had to make it back to Boskoop, which is a town near Amsterdam, where we were staying until our flight the next day. Before we got there, however, we had several stops to make...
First: the city of Kampen, where my great-grandma was baptized in the church many, many years ago. We got to see the actual baptismal that was used!

De Kerk.

The baptismal. 

The church was absolutely beautiful on the inside. It had two big pipe organs! The bigger of the two has 3200 pipes, some from the 1600's!

In 1580, there was a revolt against Catholicism in Holland and all of the beautiful paintings on the church ceilings were painted over. They got rid of the "graven images" as well ("Iconoclast!"). One statue was melted down and made into cannons. In recent years, they have been restoring the paintings on the ceiling. Slowly uncovering them and repainting them to the best of their ability (based on old pictures and descriptions).

My great-uncle says that the big organ was dismantled during World War II and hidden, so that the pipes wouldn't be used as supplies. It was only fully remantled in the 80's or 90's, when the final pipes were found in someone's basement.

Here are some graves on the floor. I wonder who is buried under there?

That's me in the background staring up at the ceiling. I had good reason.

(See the restored painting on the left?)

I don't know if I could go to church here - I'd spend the whole service looking up!

If we had come two weeks later we could have gone to an organ concert at this church... Bach's organ music. Man, I bet that concert was absolutely stunningly gorgeous. I can't even imagine how glorious it sounded.

We walked around Kampen after that. Tintin had a good time.

...sort of...

Hup Holland, hup!

Tintin found another Captain to be his friend.

Some interesting things we saw...

Not sure what this restaurant place is all about... but I hope they don't have oliphant on the menu!

Cheese. =D

 

Alright, there was this store and the windows were FULL of these mannequins! All I could think was...

That's the original gate to the city.

After Kampen, we drove to Zee, to see some sights that you wouldn't expect to see in Holland.

The ocean! You can't go to the ocean and not wade...

Don't tell the authorities, but I may have smuggled some shells into the United States without declaring them... and I'm not even sure if it was legal to pick them up in the first place.

That just about wraps up day 13!

Live long and prosper.

Day 12: I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle...

 

We did two exciting things on this day... The first was go for a bicycle ride! How can you go to Holland and NOT ride a bicycle? It is the primary mode of transportation in The Netherlands.

So what do you see while biking around the countryside? Well, cows, for one. And sheep. And horses. And geese. And other various farm animals. Also ostriches.

No, don't ask me why. We also saw a camel, but didn't get a picture.

We also went to an open market which was SO fun! Mostly because I found a book stall... where I found two Tintin books in Dutch! Huzzah! Also, a really cool comic book version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and one of The Phantom of the Opera which both follow the books almost exactly, and are in Dutch! It was really nice.

For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant for fish. I'm not a huge fish fan, so I got a type of cumin pasta. It was really good... except the bowl they gave me was enough for about five people to eat out of! On top of that, we had all sorts of appetizer/extra things to eat too, like salad, vegetables, and krokets! And on top of the pasta, for some reason, there were eggs.
After letting the food settle for a bit, we ordered ice cream.

This picture does not convey how much FOOD there was in that bowl.

~~~

Camp NaNoWriMo is going good! I'm about 10,500 words into my 30,000. 

And now, for your reading pleasure, a snippet (for clarification, the character is going to a masquerade dressed as a cat):

Rozella slipped into her gown. Well, more like it was pulled, heaved, and yanked onto her body. Then it had to be strapped and laced onto her. By the time Lynnie and the other maids were finished with her, Rozella felt as if she were wearing her bed curtains. This was by far the heaviest gown she'd ever worn. She didn't know how she was ever going to dance in it - or even walk or sit for that matter! The thing even had a tail to follow her about the room. 

~~~

Things on the reading front are also going well. I've finished three books this month, I believe! One of which is The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. I love Wodehouse... In the next week, I'm hoping to finish Agatha Christie's Autobiography and perhaps a short non-Jeeves-and-Wooster Wodehouse book.

To look for in the nearish future...

1. Review of Great Expectations.

2. Review of To The Lighthouse.

3. The last few posts from Holland.

4. Piano recital video(s).

Day 11: In retrospect, my favorite day.

We didn't have too much planned for today... Just walk around a couple of old towns. My other grandma (the one who didn't come along) said, "You're seeing the real Holland."
First we went to a little, old fishing village called Urk.

Tintin missed Captain Haddock. He was sure the Captain would love Urk.
It was so interesting to go walking down the empty streets, seeing what was in all the windows. There were lots of boats and lots of nice Dutch lace.

We walked along the ocean to a statue of a woman, looking out to sea, for her husband or son, waiting for them to return, and fearing that they wouldn't. There was a monument behind it to all the sailors from Urk who had died since 1717, with their names and ages.

It was raining, so we headed back to the car, taking alleyways and passages between houses.

 (Remnants of Koningsdag)

 (Little passageway between houses)

(A house behind another house. We took the tiny little alleyway between them)

After we left Urk, we drove to the city of Giethoorn, where we rented a little motorboat and sailed down the canals! It was glorious.

Then we went into the bay.

So what do you see on the canal other than water and trees and bridges?

LOTS of ducks!

Quite a few fowl.

Mmmmm. Pie.

Windmill with its top off.

Other boats.

And a yappy little dog.

It was so beautiful and so peaceful. It was wonderful. Someday, when I'm old and retired, I will buy a house on a canal, or on the ocean, and I will just sit there and read and write all day. Maybe own a boat and go out on the water every so often. That would be so nice. I love water.

For dinner we went to my grandma's sister's house and she gave us a 5-star meal, complete with a soup course. Oh, it was delicious - very filling. 

Live long and prosper!

P.S. Check out the 'Meet the Dolls' page! I just added new pictures!