Brussels & France

Today we paid a visit to G’s sister and her boyfriend in Belgium. We had a lot of fun, and received a tour of a local Brussels icon, the Atomium. It was built in 1958 for the World’s Fair. Afterward, we had the notion to do something even bigger. The…

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Balder

I had quite an experience today aboard the DCV Balder, the ship that my father-in-law is currently working on. This ship is being overhauled in dry dock in the city of Rotterdam, before returning to sea. The Balder is a Deep Water Construction vessel. We wore hard hats aboard the ship…

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Cruquius

Today we took a nice trip around the region again, and visited the Museum De Cruquius. The museum is on the place of a former steam pumping station built in the 1800s for draining a lake. I visited here awhile back on my second trip to the Netherlands in May 2010, but…

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Ijmuiden

Along with moving to the Netherlands, I have been introduced to a new form of transportation, via motorcycle. I rode G’s motorcycle on the back for the first time this month. The sun finally decided to come out this week, so we took a drive today. As usual, I made…

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Return

The alarm went off too soon this morning. G and I took our time getting to the airport, and I checked in fairly early.  We spent extra time on the observation deck at Schiphol together. It helped a little to watch the planes. I saw the gate and runway I…

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Birthday

This special day arrived at midnight, and I sang “Happy Birthday” to G. We stayed up late watching television together and had ice cream to celebrate.  At noon we woke up and rode the bicycles to the seaside of Noordwijk. We decided to make a local day and visit area…

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Walibi

The happiness and laughter from last night’s gift took a very long time to settle down. In between the driving and day’s excitement, we didn’t get much sleep during the night. We woke up at 8 am or so, and the three of us dragged ourselves to the car. The…

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Wolphaartsdijk

We stayed up too again, and woke up at noon this morning. I passed out for most of the drive, waking up when we reached Goes. We stopped inside of an auction house/reseller, which had lots of antiques and second hand items. There were a number of old cameras (at least 50…

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Rained Out

We woke up early afternoon, finding it was raining outside. We guessed correctly the rain would ruin our plans to visit Den Haag. Instead, we took the day slow and locally. G took me around the corner to a local bookstore, which had tons of local Dutch books. Once my…

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Windy Night

The weather continued to be rather grey today, so we stayed inside. In the late evening, we visited V for a few hours. It was worth braving the rain for a visit. We stayed wide awake afterward, feeling restless after being inside all the time. A brief lull in the…

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