A Weekend with Sarah

Last weekend our youngest daughter Sarah popped over from London to stay with us on our boat.

Luckily, she arrived just as we were launching, that is covered in an earlier blog so I won’t bore you with the details, but we all spent a few nights together on the water at last.

We also did a couple of sight seeing trips, the first, down south to the islands of Zeeland, across the amazing dams that were built to keep the sea out after the dreadful floods of 1953 that killed 1500 people.

One of our lovely dutch friends here in the boatyard, Artie, was a child of 11 years old during those floods and he told us how his family managed to escape from the rising water into their attic where he played his trumpet to attract the attention of rescuers.

The town hall in Middelburg

The islands of Zeeland are flat and often below sea level. 

They shouldn’t really exist if it wasn’t for the dogged dutch engineering which has managed to totally control the sea levels around the islands. 

Good thing they don’t get tsunamis here!

We had fresh fish and chips straight from the north sea and tried our best to shop in Middelburg, but really we just enjoyed being together as three adult friends exploring new places.

The next day we drove to Den Haag, or The Hague as us honkies call it. 

The capital city and seat of the Dutch Government.

Also the place where they try all the war criminals.

Yes, I was that tourist driving down the tram lines
in a Ferrari red Fiat Panda!

I took a wrong turn in the middle of the city and ended up driving along the railway lines, which was something of a butt clenching moment, but fortunately there wasn’t a train at that particular time.

The palace courtyard in Den Haag

We had a look around the royal palace and had lunch in a outdoor cafe set in the middle of beautiful old buildings.

The whole experience here can be quite surreal and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are actually doing it, not just in a theme park having a virtual experience.

We have been in Holland for six weeks now and it has almost become normal.

We feel like the rest of the population over here, going about our everyday business often quite unremarkable, shopping at the supermarket or the hardware store, but around many corners is a complete surprise, like an old fishing village or a collection of immaculate farm buildings with a huge working windmill in the middle.

We are definitely not bored with Holland, but we have made that shift from starry eyed visitors to almost residents.

Maybe it’s time to move on?

We are still noticing the small things like this
garden of tulips in Zierikzee.