Off To Nether-Netherlands

Right children, we begin with a geography lesson. The Netherlands is the low-slung nation with the dykes and the windmills. Holland is one of its regions (actually two provinces, North and South) that sits right next to the North Sea. People use them interchangeably because the most-visited things in The Netherlands also happen to be in Holland - namely Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Delft.

But what about the other bits? Well as our friend Jenny has recently moved from Australia to the eastern side of the Netherlands, we are able to report, following a lightning visit in June. As usual with these things, there is of course a member of the opposite sex involved, and Erwin is a charming and highly-intelligent Dutchman - fluent in English and German too! They were truly excellent hosts, and went out of their way to give us a genuine Dutch weekend.

Let's start with the food. The Dutch apparently do! Breakfast was a lavish affair with numerous courses, ranging from savoury (eggs, salmon, meat, white asparagus) through to the uniquely-dutch chocolate sprinkles ("hagelslag") which are enjoyed on bread, or in Erwin's case, on everything.

First destination was a national park that draws Dutch people from miles around. Why? Because it actually has a few decent hills! The roads were busy with serious cyclists actually having to use their gears, but we were more interested in the friendly wild ponies (which by the way is now the THIRD time we've come across lovely wild mini-horses in Europe; Dartmoor and Iceland being the others)


We cruised around the area, going to a number of interesting small towns whose names we sadly can't remember, but including the home of Grolsch beer, and a place with a star-shaped network of defensive canals, with cannon still in position. Just in case those nearby Germans get any ideas....


No visit to The Netherlands could be complete without a bicycle-riding session; this is a nation where bicycles outnumber people, after all. We took a delightful spin around J & E's home town, enjoying the quite astonishing flatness (it makes London look Himalayan) - particularly Erwin, who affixed Jenny to his rear rack so that the rest of us could have a bike each!

Lost energy was replaced by visiting a traditional pannenkoekenhuis (dutch-pancake house) where we enjoyed pannekoek in both savoury (bacon and local forest mushroom) and sweet (delicious apple with stroop syrup) varieties:

Huge thanks to J & E for their excellent hospitality and for showing us that there's much more to Dutch life than Amsterdam's seedy charms...