The Beach is this way

April 22, 2014

I have been a little behind on keeping up with my writing. Every night we all sit up late and visit and everyone tells stories about when they were young and all the crazy antics they were into and reminiscing about the last time each of them were in Holland. It has been great fun and super interesting; Ben loves hearing the stories and I’m loving getting to know everyone better. However it gives me little to no time to keep my blog up-to-date. So I’m trying to sneak it in before we head out on our adventures in the morning. It’s hard to concentrate though because Peggy and Joan are all excited and fired up for the day, but they have gone over to the other cabin so hopefully I can get this done.

Tuesday was our day for visiting The Hague. We left the cabins at 10am and it took us an hour to get into the city. We had put our destination as the house where Opa Van Exel had his shoe store (they also lived above the store). 

Again we took a bunch of pictures in front of the house and everyone driving by probably thought we were crazy. Then we just followed Oma and let her show us around the area; she showed us where she went to school, where she had her first job, and the doctor’s office where she gave birth to her first child, Elly. She told us that while she was there she was so homesick while she was there, and then she laughed because her parents’ house was literally one block up and around the corner.

We walked down to a shopping area and poked through a few shops. We ended up spending quite a bit of time at a candy store. I cannot believe how much candy all the “adults” have been eating on this trip; they constantly have a piece of candy in their mouths, and it’s all some variation on black licorice (of course). 

Oh yes, they are very generous and always want to share (and I always try their weird candy because I’ll try anything, this folly lead me to having damp candy disintegrating in my pocket the previous day when we got caught in the rain), but Jonathan, Jessica and Ryan are not having any of it, no matter how much they are persuaded. I told Oma that her kids were running wild and ruining their appetites, she said something to the effect of “they’ve always been like that”.

So with pockets bursting with candy we continued on our walk and headed to the beach. We walked to the docks and Oma led us to a restaurant that she had been to in the past and we had an awesome fish and chips lunch. The plates of food were so huge we only got one plate for every two people and it was more than enough.

The morning had started out pretty grey and it didn’t look like it was going to clear up (in fact it was trying to rain), but by the time we came out of the restaurant it was clear and sunny and beautiful. So we continued to the beach and enjoyed a lovely stroll down the boardwalk all the way to the pier. Apparently about a year ago the pier was purchased by some guy who ended up going bankrupt, so the pier was closed and falling into disrepair. Peggy said she could remember walking to the beach from her grandparents’ house and going to the pier.

Along the pier we came across this section with a bunch of big and little statues; on our way back we stopped there for a rest and enjoyed some ice cream. 

On our way back to the car we stopped at the Jumbo grocery store to pick up supplies. Ryan wanted to make us a stirfry for dinner (which proved difficult as none of the frying pans were very big), and of course we needed more vla (a creamy pudding that Peggy has been eating every day before and after every meal). Going grocery shopping with 10 people is a bad idea, it’s just chaos. I opted to wander on my own and just let everyone else figure out what we needed for food for the next few days. 

Too many people with too many opinions = nothing gets done in a timely manner. By the time we left the grocery store we had enough food so that everyone had a bag or a box to carry back to the car. Once we got back to the cabins we enjoyed another evening of food, wine and storytelling.

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.