Hurray for facebook!

Sunday, 2 August 2015

 

As I said in the title of this post: hurray for facebook, because it's thanks to facebook, and the lovely lady who is married to my cousin, who gave me the idea to go to the floating flower show today.

Ina had posted pictures on fb of yesterday's show and I commented that I would've loved to see this.  The response was that it would again be on today and I could google for information.  So I did!

Patricia and I spent a quiet morning at home and then drove to Rijswijk first, because I wanted to show her where and how Delft ware is made.  We stopped at De Delftse Pauw, a small factory where Delft ware is produced, painted and sold.

 

 

  

As we are still early for the Westlands Corso, the reason of our trip, we want to walk to the town centre, but on our walk we discover that a lot of people are finding places along the water to have a premium spot for watching the boats.  We decide to park the car in a quite spot and go for a short walk instead.

 

We wouldn't be dedicated geocachers if we wouldn't look for a cache in the area and, as we discover there is one only 500m from where we are we head in that direction. We find:

TB Hotel Datreco

 

 

Normally a TB Hotel is a bigger kind of container with enough room for more than one Travel Bug, but this cache is literally a hotel with rooms and beds.  We loved it and gave it a favourite point.

When we return it's still early, and as Patricia didn't feel like finding another cache we settle in the car for a while, have lunch and wait for the parade to start.  It does so at 2 pm and lasts for at least an hour!

 

And now we're home and I am going to have an early night.  All the travelling on the busy, and often 5 lanes wide, Dutch roads takes a lot of concentration and I have had it for today...

Brocante and Antique market in Heusden and lunch with Margriet

Saturday, 1 August 2015

 

We wake up to another wonderful morning, and get ready to go on a 1 hour drive to Heusden.  Heusden is a very old fortified town, dating back to the 8th century.  We used to live in Oudheusden, which was part of Heusden, until we migrated to Australia.

Patricia and I take a short detour through the streets, because I would like to show her where we used to live and I also wanted to see it for myself again.  A lot had changed.  We have been away now for 35 years and in those years we have seen the decline of the area and houses, but now it's all much improved again with better maintained houses, lovely gardens and so much greenery! The biggest change was the disappearance of the supermarket on the corner where I used to do all my shopping.  A very strange sight indeed.

Next we went on to the town centre where we were to meet Margriet.  We parked the car away from the centre and a horse-drawn wagon took us to the market place.

 

Patricia and I walked around for a bit until it was time for our date, and met up with Margriet and next Patricia did her rounds by herself and let us talk.

We had a lot to catch up with and it was great to see Margriet so well, because she's been very ill.  Just over a year go I visited her in hospital.

We had lunch at De Pannekoekenbakker (a pancake restaurant) after which Margriet went home again for her daily rest and visitors later in the day.

Patricia and I decided to combine a walk through town with a geocache hunt: a multi.  We had to walk through a lot of streets to find all the numbers 8 which appeared in pictures of the cache description, a bit like the multi with the pictures that we did in Nederhorst den Berg.

One of the numbers 8 of course (but not the correct one!) ;-)

 

 

A trip to the Railway Museum in Utrecht

 Friday, 31 July 2015

Today the sun is shining again when we get up and it looks like it's going to be a glorious day, so we plan to go out.  Partricia likes trains and railways, therefore we go to the Railway Museum in Utrecht, not far from here.

Getting there is a bit of a problem, as there's roadworks on the way to the museum and my GPS insists on sending me the wrong way, even after I have tried to get it to make a detour.  Close to the roadblock a friendly council worker asks me where I want to go.  I am quite distracted and a bit flustered, because I can't find my way, so I start answering her in very good English!!! She's not at all worried about it and responds in English too! Haha... At least it's clear now after her explanation.  She stops the traffic, allows me to make a U-turn and on our way we go again, following all the M-signs until we reach the museum parking lot.

The museum itself is a real surprise.  Not at all like a regular boring museum with railway stock littering a huge space, but dotted with various interesting and funny rides and such.

We enter the huge hall of the former railway station of Utrecht and from there walk to the different areas of interest.  The first one brings us to an old mining town in England where the story of steam trains begins and it ends with the first Dutch steam train on display.

At the end a small art gallery with pictures denoting scenes involving trains

The set-up was wonderful and so realistic and not one moment did we feel like we were walking around in a museum.  This was an audio tour and lucky for Patricia it was available in English.

There was a theatre which we enjoyed (or rather I did, because it was all in Dutch of course) and the rolling stock from old to modern trains, of which a few pictures:

We also went to Grand dad's attic, which really was a mild kind of roller coaster ride and later to the Firetest where we had to drive a train in a simulator, which was very realistic with the screen in front of us being the railway line and landscape we were travelling on an through.

There was much more and the museum catered very well for children, which is fantastic.  It was the same at the Muiderslot.  So great that children don't have to follow their parents to boring museums nowadays.  It's fun!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures after these as my phone turned itself off and on again, and... having a temporary Dutch SIM I didn't have my PIN handy, so that was the end of that!

We enjoyed lunch in the sun and after our last round (and a return to the simulator!) we left to go home.  We did our groceries shopping on the way back and bought a treat (ah, the Dutch pastries and cakes are so decadent), because we could. ;-)

After dinner the weather was still fine, so I took out the bike and went for a ride to Kortenhoef.  It was a lovely ride and in Kortenhoef all the houses had their own little bridges, because they were all on the water.  It was a 16 km ride, and a mild sort of evening, so it was a great pleasure to be out and about and enjoy the scenery.