Today was the visit to The Netherlands .. The Netherlands or Holland is a very low lying country .. There are lots of dikes and dunes to protect the low lying areas from flooding .. Had we gone before May 21 we would have been taken to see the famous flowers of Holland but this was unfortunately not the season for it
Instead we went to a smallish fishing village on the coast called Volvendham .It was full of fishing boats and picturesque colourful houses
The docks had a power line for every boat's pier .. Somethin i hadn't seen before ... The skies were ominously dark as we began strolling around the city .. The houses here were boxed together tightly so as to maximize the available space
Some of the houses even had a level below the road height .. In The Netherlands , lot of commuting is done by way of bicycles .. So much so that , all the roads have a separate lane for cycles complete with little traffic signals for them .. Some cars are even equipped with overhead racks to carry the cycles
Just as we were completing the tour of the city , it started pouring .. We took shelter in a roadside stall selling , as luck would have it , hot dogs :P .. We had some hot fries and hot dogs while waiting for the rain to abate ... When it showed no sings of doing so , we took the umbrella ( The attentive and regular reader will know it was bought in Germany :P ) and proceeded to look around a bit more
We left this place after about an hour there and drove to a cheese and shoe factory .. Netherlands is famous for its cheese and its wooden shoes .. The wooden shoes used to be worn by farmers when they were workin in the flooded fields .. After some explaining of how cheese is made and some quite delicious sample of the various types of cheese ( This included even non veg cheese ) we were shown a demonstration of how wooden shoes are made.. These days they are bought just for decorative purposes by tourists , and so they even have multi coloured shoes
After buyin some cheese ( which I'm enjoying to this day ) we left the farm and went for a photo stop in front of a huge windmill, which the Netherlands is quite famous for
The windmills were used in the olden days to dry the flooded fields .. These days these huge structures are little more than decorative figures on the landscape.. Quite a few of them still around though
After this we headed into Amsterdam , the capital , and headed straight for lunch .. Was local dutch meal .. Fries and Croquettes .. After this we went on a cruise on some of the many canals of Amsterdam ... The city was founded when the dam on the river Amstel was built , thereby leading to its name as well and it is full of canals and waterways
There were cycles galore on the streets of Amsterdam as well and lots of rails provided to park them next to and lock onto .. Sometimes even that is not enough though as depicted by this photograph
At one point on the cruise , we could see 7 bridges in one straight line , one behind the other .. We also saw the Dutch coat of arms ( The XXX )
After the cruise we were let off at Dam square , the main square of Amsterdam .. Walked around there for a while , saw the palace and generally hung around the area
A magician was starting to perform in the square , but it was just as we had to leave though :/ .. From here we drove to Madhuradam where they had Miniature Holland , models of all the important buildings of Holland on a scale of 1:25
All the models were remarkably detailed and took many years to build .. Even the shrubs surrounding the buildings were miniatures , grown especially for this park .. Some of the buildings even had miniature people in them .. Like, a miniature castle would have tiny soldiers gathered in the field .
We were given a map which had information about each model and its number to go by
Some of the building even had moving mechanical parts to display the working of them .. Some models, on inserting a coin would move around and perform various actions .. Eg : On a model of a fair , the roller coaster would go for a ride around the circuit , the merry go round will move etc etc .. On a model of a bridge , the bridge will rise everytime a boat passes underneath and come back to position once the boat has crossed etc , In a ship repair yard , the ship will come out after the repairs ..... and so on
They had moving automobiles on highways , an extensive railway setup complete with bridges over obstacles that trains would ply on ,mini cable cars and even a model of an airport where planes would move up and down the runway
They also had a mini football field , lookin down on which u would get the feeling that u were up in a blimp flying over the field making the people look like ants
After takin a LOT of pictures here , in the process depleting all the memory as well as draining the battery of the camera , we left Madhuradam and went back to Antwerp and to the hotel .
PS : It was indeed fortunate that we had taken the laptop along as we could transfer photos from the camera when the memory would run out , as it quite frequently did , what with the sheer volume of photos taken ..
PPS: I'm only including one day in this post as this was unnaturally long with lots of pics by itself and also cause the next day is Paris , which will be equally ,if not more , lengthy
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