Rain Rain go away

April 21, 2014

Today after a quick but hectic breakfast at the main house we piled into cars (old people in one car and young people in the other) and headed to Hoorne. 

One of Peggy’s friends had suggested that we go to the Zuiderzee Museum, which is an open air museum/town that had been built on the coast of the South Sea out of old buildings that had been donated from towns in the area and they were all deconstructed and reconstructed for the museum. We did a whole loop starting in Hoorne and taking an old steam train through the countryside, which included tulip fields and windmills, for about an hour and a half.

 We stopped in a little town and wandered around there for a bit before catching an old boat for about another hour and a bit before arriving at the museum.

 The train and the boat were both super cool, and we even got poffertjes (little pancakes with icing sugar) on the train and in town we hot delicious croquets and Barbeque Ham chips.

 I guess Uncle Rick has been under quite a bit of stress driving around with his three sisters in the back of his car for the last week and a half, because even after the copious amounts of coffee he consumes throughout the day he still fell asleep on the boat.

Once we got to the museum we split off into little groups and wandered freely. At first I thought that the museum was just the little ramshackle houses and a pond area with a windmill, but then we went around the corner and there was a main street and church, shops and everything. 

It was amazing! There were people in period costumes walking around and you could talk to them and ask them questions (of course we didn’t, but Peggy asked them all sorts of questions), but we did see one of the ladies beating a rug.

I actually wish that we had more time to wander around but we wanted to catch the little ferry at 4:45pm to our next train. It had been cloudy and overcast and a bit chilly all day threatening rain, and by the time we were getting on the boat it was raining pretty badly. 

Luckily we made it under the small section of the boat that was actually covered. Of course the whole boat was just packed. I personally didn’t realize that there were actually two stops on the trip, but at one point we were docked but no one was moving to get off. Suddenly as we were about to push off, Ben realized that this was where we were supposed to be getting off. Of course they had already pulled up the ram and we were at the opposite end of the boat. So we all had to shove our way past all the soaked people, who were pretty annoyed at this point and yelling something at us, but whatever, we made it off the boat and to the train station.

Of course we all got soaked; poor Oma was wearing sandals with socks and her socks were all wet. Luckily Jessica had emergency socks in her purse, so Oma could have dry feet for the rest of the evening. The train back to the station was a regular modern train so we got back pretty quickly. Also because it was a holiday we didn’t have to pay for parking, so that was a nice bonus. We had decided that before heading back to the cabins we would stop in Vreeland to see the house that Peggy’s Opa Griffioen  grew up in. Of course there we are taking pictures in front of some person’s house, which must have looked pretty weird.

By this time it was after 7pm and we were all starving. We had decided earlier to go for pannekoek and there just so happened to be a pannekoek house right down the street from Opa’s house, so we all pilled in there and got these amazing, huge, savory pannekoeks. Oma and I couldn’t finish ours so Ben ended up eating about one and a half, so he was pretty stuffed.

Peggy and Rick talk to everyone, so the asked the waitress if there were still any Griffioen’s who lived in the area. She said that she married a Griffioen and there was a Hank Griffieon who lived just down the street. Of course then Peggy and Rick were determined to go knock on his door. Meanwhile the rest of us are loitering on the street and everyone here always has their blinds open so you can see right into their houses, and we were all standing outside this one house and watching some guy’s TV. Turns out we were watching TV with Hank Griffieon! All us kids decided to head back to the cabins, but everyone else went to knock on the door. They ended up being invited in and had an awesome visit with their long lost relative. Pretty awesome stuff.