Netherlands
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Back to the Netherlands
Road to Sao Roque After a short stay in Piedade we biked to Sao Roque. Ofcourse we had some nice views. And who are we, not to show them to you. Sao Roque The trip to Sao Roque was hard, but it was the last long trip before our flight back to the Netherlands. In Sao Roque we walked around the town. It was just as lovely as the rest of the island. The last view of Pico was setteling in. Our last ride on our bikes we went down a road with a velocity of 50 kilometers a hour. That was fun. Return from Azores Our last flight in…
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Strasbourg and Ardennes
As we are writing this, we are already back in Haastrecht. The past few months have gone by so fast! We are now preparing for our next trip, which we should reveal soon. For now lets look back on the last few days of the trip. Strasbourg From Italy we drove straight through Switzerland directly into Germany, where we stayed for one night. From there we drove to the city of Strasbourg, right across the French border. There is a lot of history in that city and we wanted to properly check it out. We stayed for 2 days, right in the city center. We enjoyed the city’s varied and…
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“Traces of war” hike and Castle Heeswijk
Hike “Traces of war” In a part of the Loonse and Drunense dunes that we haven’t covered yet, stood a memorial monument. We hiked for two kilometers from our car to the memorial place. After a short while Tim discovered some QR-codes and began to scan them whit his phone. This area was one of the places the Germans held there ammunition. At the end of there war the German blew up there ammunition, because there were afraid it would fell into the wrong hands. Castle Heeswijk As you probably will know now, we love to snoop around in castles, gardens and history. The castle itself is an old building,…
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War museum and Drunense duinen
Museum of war Overloon This is the biggest museum in the Netherlands regarding World War II. We decided to pay in front because the last time we went to a museum is was sold out. It’s a good thing we did because it was full. After we entered the first thing we found is a hall full of collectibles regarding the German occupation. There is a lot of history to tell and the most interesting thing that we found, is that the Germans loved their paperwork and the reason why Dutch people love their road signs. After the history part we walked into a big hall with a lot of…
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Another hike, another move
We have been slacking with posting for a few days. Past weekend we have spend working on some fun projects and we had to get our last Covid vaccination. But here we are again, time for another update. Hunebed Hike For our last trip in Odoorn we felt we had an obligation to atleast see a hunebed. We were in the province which is famous for them afterall. We decided to do another hike, lucky for us the town nearby has one of the biggest hunebeds and also a nice hiking trail. It was a trail of 13 kilometers and went through farmland, forests and small towns. It was a…
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Heritage, prisons and craftmanship
We’re enjoying Drenthe quite a bit! The time we took for sightseeing might be to short to see all that we want to see and it turns out there is so much fun stuff to see and do here. Our next best thing of “things to do” on our list was the prison museum in Veenhuizen. This small village was home to the most secure prison in the Netherlands up to 2007. They dedicated one of the buildings as a museum which focusses on the prison system in the Netherlands, starting in the middle ages up to the present day. We booked a guided tour through the part of the…
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Dwingelderveld and Westerbork
After our arrival in Odoorn we decided to go to Dwingelderveld and Westerbork. Dwingelderveld National Park This national park has some walking routes. The shortest is around 5 km, the second is 7 km and the longest is 13 km. We decided to take the longest. The whole route exist our of a gray trail that we had to follow. Because of the grey color is was easy to miss some of the things. After a few hours of walking we discovered that for ourselves. So we took a detour of 1 km. The scenery was really nice. We did some walking before, but not this far. We found that…
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Bai Zwolle, Hai Odoorn
The weather here in the Netherlands has been quite crappy these past few days.. It did limit our motivation of going outside somewhat but we manage to hike through another national park called “Sallandse Heuvelrug”. The park consists mostly out of a large heather with some nice flowing hills. We enjoyed being here a lot, there were not many people around and the area was beautiful. This week we also have left our awesome BnB near Zwolle and moved up further north into the province of Drenthe. During our car journey, we stopped along the way for lunch at a cool looking restaurant near the edge of a forest area.…
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Giethoorn
One of those huge tourist attractions we’ve heard lots about, but never went. Giethoorn. Since we are in the neighborhood we couldn’t resist investigating it. It was actually kind of nice. We were also very lucky with the amount of tourists, because we went on a Monday, the weather forecast was not great, and also there is still somewhat of a pandemic going on. That probably had something to do with it. We decided on renting a electric boat for the day and just cruise through the small canals and national parks nearby. It turned out to be a very nice day indeed. We did think about what it must…
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Waterloopbos and Naturalis
Naturalis? You Dutch readers might think “That’s not near Zwolle at all!” And you are right, it is not. We had to be in Leiden for Tim’s by-annual blood tests which he needs to do because of his Hemophilia. Since we both had never been to the Naturalis and it’s in walking distance of the hospital, we decided to visit. Naturalis The Naturalis is a 200 years old natural historic museum based in an amazing looking building. They moved into this futuristic piece of architecture not too long ago. The museum has an impressive display of taxidermy, fossils and minerals. The crown jewels are a meteorite which was formed at…
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New stay and National Park Weerribben
We left our lovely stay in Putten, said goodbye to our hostess and a few hours later we arrived at our next stay in Zwolle. New stay This stay is a farm that’s build on a mount. We get to stay in the front of the house and are allowed to use its massive garden. The owner and his wife are staying in the other side of the house and have their own private garden aswell. For the next ten days we will be staying here. Not too bad right?! National Park Weerribben This Park is actually called Weerribben – Wieden because it’s divided in two pieces. For every park…
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Veluwe Zoom, day 2
We decided, after enjoying the first hike so much, to go for another day of hiking in the beautiful Veluwe Zoom national park. We hiked for about seven kilometers and this time we actually saw some wildlife! Besides the noisy people. Last trip This concluded another great day in the outdoors. It was also our last trip while staying in the Veluwe, as we are heading up north in a few days. Its been great being here and we would definitely like to return again some day. See you next week from a new temporary home near Zwolle!
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Airborne Museum and Veluwe Zoom
The last two days we walked around in the Airborne museum and the Veluwe Zoom. We saw some pretty neat sights and ofcourse we’ve taken some pictures. Airborne museum The Airborne museum is in Oosterbeek close to Arnhem. It’s main theme is operation Market Garden where mostly British and Polish soldiers. They tried to clear the way for the main army that landed on Normandy’s beaches during D-day. The operation failed and the troops had to flee. This museum tells the personal stories about people beeing affected by the war. Airborne cemetary After we visited the museum we headed to the cemetary that was a 15 minute walk away. This…
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Elburg and Harderwijk
For some of you these two places are pretty much in your backgarden. We’ve never been there before. Especially Elburg seemed very interesting and we decided to spend a day checking them out. We started in Elburg. This is a small city located within ancient fortified walls and next two large lakes, which used to be part of the Northsea. It was very nice to walk around and explore its narrow streets. We were also in luck as it was the first day of the church tower being open for the public. For a measly 1,50 euro you could climb the tower and have a great view across the city.…
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Cycling and Palace Het Loo
The last two days we did some cycling and we visited palace “Het Loo”. Cycling We chose to cycle through Ermelo and back. The part of the route that we thought was nice to cycle through was the forest between Garderen and Drie. Between the pictures you’ll find a map of our route. It was a total amount of 41 km. This was more then we used to ride. Palace Het Loo This palace is located in Apeldoorn and was inhabited until 1975 by the Dutch royal family. The palace gardens were big and if you got nothing better to do you can stay in them forever, or till the…
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Hoge Veluwe – Round 2
We had some down time the past few days, mostly due to a combination of bad weather, covid vaccinations and some personal work projects. The weather was shaping up again yesterday and we decided to go back to the Hoge Veluwe park. We had not seen a few places yet. Kröller-Müller Museum In the park we took the free white bicycles and rode to the Kröller-Müller Museum. This museum was build in the middle of the park and owned the art collection of the Kröller-Müller family. It hosts one of the most largest collections of van Gogh. We walked faster through the pieces of art then we wanted, because it…
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Radio Kootwijk and Hoge Veluwe
One of the reasons we chose to go to Putten is because of the Veluwe and offcourse we, people from the city, had to decide to go sightseeing by bike. Cycling and watchtower Kootwijkerzand The first day we were optimistic and we drove around 20 km to the Sand sculptures. If you want to read this, visit our blog from two days ago. If not, just go with this :D. The second day we also decided to cycle and went for around 40 km. With the pain still in our butts we started our route to Radio Kootwijk and the watchtower of Kootwijkerzand. We were doing well for 30 km,…
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Arriving in Putten and sand sculptures
We departed from Haastrecht and arrived a hour later in Veenhuizen that’s close to Putten. We were welcomed by the owners of the house where we’ll stay in for the next three weeks. The house The house has a relaxing area in the shade at the back of the garden and a parking spot for our car. It’s also has a dinner table outside with a parasol and a big as television. This is a nice place where we can stay for a while. The place also comes with two bicycles for us to use. Cycling We went for a little ride on our bikes and were gone for four…
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Next two months
We promised to show you our schedule. Itinerary 14th of June 2021, Putten NetherlandsWe have to say goodbye to our place in Haastrecht. The place we will stay in next is near the town Putten. We already have a route map and bikes. So there will be lots to do and to see. And offcourse we’ll be working at our own hobby’s. 5th of July 2021, Zwolle NetherlandsFor a short period of time we will stay in a farm that’s on a mound, that’s actually a tiny house. It’s in the north of Zwolle. We want to visit Giethoorn and we hope it’s not to busy. 15th of July 2021,…
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Smokin’ Session
If we are in Haastrecht, ofcourse we have to use the smoker. We invited some friends over to spend the day in the sunshine and eat delicious smoked meat. The day started bright and early, at 5:00 in the morning. The fire had to be lit this early as we planned to smoke some pork for at least ten hours. For those who have never seen it before, this bad ass smoker is built from scratch by Toon and Tim a few years ago. It runs on big chunks of wood which need to be chopped by hand. The fire is burning in the front and the heat (and smoke)…
