25 June - 1 July 2011

I've always wanted to go to the Palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn and we finally did! It was a rainy day but that doesn't stop the Nederlanders! This is a picture of just the stables where they kept all the horses and their cool cars. The stables were spotless with very expensive wood in the doors of the individual horse stalls.

This palace was huge, surrounded by 1600 acres of woods - it used to be royalty's hunting lodge. This is the 600 meter walk from the stables to the actual palace.

And here's the palace. We couldn't take pictures inside but it was pretty cool. We had an audio tour that explained things in each room. The history of Dutch royalty (the House of Orange) is fascinating.
The castle was occupied by the royal family until the mid-1900's. Then it was restored to it's original state and it's now a museum.

This was my favorite part - the gardens in the back. Very elaborate and beautiful. The fountain in the picture is in the "King's Garden" and shoots about 14 meters (45 feet) high.

These gardens reminded me of pictures I've seen of Versailles in France. The manpower required to maintain these gardens must be tremendous.

More beautifully manicured gardens.

We had the chance to spend a couple days on the island of Ameland, way north in the mission. This is a 28 kilometer dike that has been built to get across this inlet - as a result of building it, it stopped all boat travel in and out and dried up the fishing trade for all the little towns below it.
The dike and North Sea is to the left and the enclosed water to the right.

We had to take a 45 min ferry ride to get to the island. Unfortunately, it was packed with screaming kids and teenagers. It was also a very unseasonably hot day.

We wandered around the little towns on this island - just one of many cute little Dutch houses on the island. Today the island supports itself with tourism. In the early years they supported the island with whaling and ship wreck salvage.

I loved this house front.

This is the little street our B & B was on - notice the cute church at the end of it. The church steeples are tall enough that they served as beacons to the sailors. You can see the small opening at the top that may have held a lantern.

We walked on the beach for a while - huge expanse of sand - this is on the North Sea.

A cool view of the little town from the beach. Notice the windmill in the background.

Wandering around by the beach.

We climbed this lighthouse - over 300 stairs, winding and narrow, and very stifling hot with no breeze until we got to the top. Then the view was wonderful and so was the breeze.

Our bedroom at our B & B - notice the stairs going up to a loft. The owner is kind of an artistic guy and I think he designed it - sort of had a concentration camp feel with gray concrete floors and walls. But it was still nice. I had fun playing with the bed control that made it go up and down - I felt like I was in a hospital. I'm holding a cute little box of chocolate sprinkles that came with our breakfast. Remember, the Dutch love to put chocolate sprinkles on everything.

This is the typical Dutch breakfast that the B & B's always serve here. It's yummy with fresh fruit, lots of breads, cheese, hard boiled egg, fresh squeezed juice, yogurt, and granola. We ate in a nice little sun room.

The first day we were there, we roasted. Then we had a huge thunderstorm that night and the next day was 20 degrees colder so we had to get out the coats and umbrellas. This was a historical museum we visited - this is a baby whalebone ribs. The other large pieces are 300 year-old whale bone that was used as fence pickets around the yards.

This was a commander's house - many homes have the year on the outside of when they were built. This one was built in 1751. The oldest one we saw was 1609. The newest one we saw was 2002 (yes, 2002).
This one is now a museum and the interior is furnished in period furniture. The pictures that follow are from the interior of this house.

The more tile the home had in it, the more prestigious they were. These tiles used to cost 3 cents each. Today they are 100 euros each.

This family must have been well off, as look at the walls in this kitchen. Covered with tile.

These little bed compartments were right in the kitchen - they were small as people believed it was better to sleep sitting up rather than laying down. The parents' bed had a little shelf at their feet where they put the baby. (The predecessor to the crib.)

I loved this horse. This was a rescue museum we visited. They used to have these big horses pull a boat out into the ocean when a ship had crashed and people needed to be rescued. Now on this island, 14 times each year, they have the horses drag out the boat and they kind of re-enact it. We wish we could have seen it while we were there.

This is the boat the horses pull out into the ocean.

It was a great little 2 day trip which enabled us to see a part of our mission that we had never been to before.

One morning we woke up and outside our apartment was this huge crane. We weren't sure what they were doing, but then noticed they were putting men up there in a bucket to work on the top of the church tower and clock.

Here they are, working way up at the top.

One day I went for a typical walk/jog down to the canal and around town. I got caught in a downpour when I wasn't anywhere close to home. I got soaked so had to take a picture of me after the downpour.

Loel had to take two trips down to Belgium this week to deliver things. New washing machine for an elder's apt in Kortrijk, new fridge for one in St. Niklaas, picked up boxes of archives from our old office to bring up to the Netherlands, etc. (About 6 1/2 hours of driving.) He took one of the office elders with him (they're in a threesome now so can spare one) so I stayed home. I shopped in a new outside market we had found and to another grocery store. We find that it's much cheaper to buy all our fresh fruits and veggies at the outdoor markets.