Golden Tulip Tjaarda Oranjewoud

From Alice's Diary
"WEDNESDAY – LEEUWARDEN / GROUW – 08.07.09
The weather has turned sour but never mind we certainly can't complain as we have only had 3 slightly bad days in 5 weeks. Easy morning although I did spend a bit of time just to organize our cases ready for the big trip home. Christien and I went to the supermarket to get a few things and at 12.30pm Fenna arrived. After eating a ...

... lunch and then the four of us went into the city.  I just love Leeuwarden.  We walked around for awhile and then went on a little boat through the canals.  I learned quite a lot about the history of Leeuwarden that no doubt I had learned at school but seeing that, that is a long time ago I had forgotten quite a lot.  Before we got back we saw Christien’s sister in law Alie on her bike, camera in hand taking photo ...

... Terschelling West etc.  Had some lunch(typically dutch "warm sandwiches" at the seaside of course and then walked around looking at everything.  At 6pm we arrived back home after a long and emotional day and cooked dinner.  We had potatoes with raw witlof just like mum used to make and a piece of steak.  Yum, Yum.  The weather is still fine not cold now we will see what tomorrow brings."

The trip was for Alice to help Pieti buy a new washing machine so we took the opportunity to have a look around

 A trip of about 15km from Lekkum took us to Dokkum which is a dutch fortified town in the municipality of Dongeradeel in the province of Friesland. Not very big about 15,000 people.

This town (city) is also one of the eleven cities that form the 200km skating race which can only happen if all the course is frozen over. Averages about once every ...

Some comments from Alice's diary whilst with her family
"MONDAY – LEKKUM – 29.6.09 We are now relaxing.  Pieti and Durk's backyard, beautiful weather, what more do we want.  I was up early as per usual but knew where to find the tea and coffee and sat very quietly getting my diary up to date.  Durk had gone to work and Pieti came down stairs shortly after.  Mac slept until 6am I think after all our travelling he had ...

This is Zwolle, my new home. I wanted to share a few pictures of the town with you guys and show you how pretty it is. The city is beautiful- plenty of good architecture and flowers everywhere. I love the brickwork on some of these buildings.

... so finally she has a copy (she's wanted one for awhile). After dinner, we shared a piece of yummy strawberry cake, then walked around the town a little to see some of the houses our ancestors where our ancestors used to live. It was starting to get late before we had even left Burdaard, and we still had to drive to Amsterdam, drop off the car, and get to our hotel. We drove over the Afsletdijk on the way there, which is very ...

... day. Our first stop was a small Dutch town called Vesting Bourtagne. We spent about an hour there, walking around and looking at the old buildings. It had a series of bridges and dikes that were used to protect the town from its enemies. We also had a little snack too. Herring. Christy, Nat and I each had one. To eat a herring properly, you have to hold it by the tail over your mouth and take a bite. We all managed to eat "properly" the first time, but eventually we forgot ...

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)
< br>I was due to fly out of Amsterdam in the evening so our hope was to head west to the island of Texel, then south to Den Helder and onto Amsterdam, thus completing a whole anti-clockwise circuit of the country. After listening to our plan and doing his best to comply by looking at many different train and bus combinations, the man at the train station ...

... so hopefully we'll get a better picture then. After our picnic and a walk around town we decided to take the scenic route back to Amsterdam - around the other side of the IJsselmeer (IJssel lake). On the way to Harlingen we had driven on top of a sea wall and had seen the lake on one side. It was beautiful with small waves (it's a big lake) and large masted sailboats. On the map it looked as though we would be doing a flatter version of the California ...