Day 6

So, hope you’re ready for a big picture post! This is the day that I went absolutely crazy with the camera…now, we did see a lot in this day, so it’s partly justified (in my mind anyway!). But I will admit that maybe, just maybe I went a tad overboard. Thankfully we do have a digital camera, so it’s not so bad; we can always delete the ones that don’t turn out! I believe I took over 300 pictures this day. There’s probably about 150 pictures of cobblestone alone (they were so interesting at the time!), but I suppose at some point they do start looking like all the other cobblestone roads we saw. Well, rather than ramble on about how many pictures I shouldn’t have taken, I’ll tell you a bit about our day!

We began our day in Giethoorn, and oh what a beautiful city!! We rented two little boats, Alvar driving one and his brother the other. We were allowed to travel 6km an hour – that was the limit! But, as we toured thru this little town, I almost wish it was a little slower than that. Quiet little canals going this way and that, cafés and people’s houses right on the water and one little bridge after the other crossing over the canals. Absolutely beautiful (did I say that already?!). Rather than go writing about it, I’ll post a few extra pictures today of our boat tour.

Fortunately, the tour thru the town was dry, but as soon as we headed out to “open water”, it poured! I happened to have two umbrellas with me – so Mom and I stayed quite a bit drier than the rest our family. Everyone else was completely soaked by the time we got off the boats. We went inside the restaurant for some coffee and hot chocolate to warm and dry up (as best as we could anyway) before leaving for our next destination.

We then went on to Germany to visit Bentheim Castle. This castle was first documented around 1050. Yup, that’s right, 1050 – that is OLD!! It’s been renovated since then (obviously), but still pretty neat to know how long ago it actually started. We took a self-guided tour in and outside of the castle. Again, I could go on and on, but it’s much more fun to look at pictures ;)

After touring the castle, we walked around the city of Bad Bentheim for a while. Well, most everyone walked, I practically ran. I just couldn’t get over how neat this city was! There was cobblestone everywhere, which in itself is really neat – but on top of that the area we were in was full of hills. So basically it looked like one street disappeared into the next and then into the next again – it was so cool!! I kept running on ahead to see where the street would go – I think I might have made Alvar a tad nervous doing this as I’d be out of sight fairly quickly! I just couldn’t contain myself here in Germany, it was so exciting to be in such an old city, tiny roads all intertwined, little stairways going here and there, a beautiful old church with interesting gravestones too – and of course the castle we had just toured thru in the middle of it all! Hamilton doesn’t have anything remotely close to this! Needless to say, this is where a lot of the pictures were taken by me, I just couldn’t help it!

After all the running around we sat down for refreshments; we were served coffee (for those who had coffee!) in cute coffee pots with cups/saucers to match (and another lovely biscuit to go with it too).

We walked back to the van, but on the way I decided to try this cool “spinner” in the middle of one of the squares (see picture below). I saw some kids on it earlier, and they looked like they were having fun, so I wanted to give it a try too. If I ever see one of those things again, ever, it will be too soon. As soon as I started spinning, I couldn’t stop. Seriously, I really couldn’t stop this thing on my own (what kind of practical joke was this?? There’s probably some secret hidden camera somewhere in that area that records all the crazy people who get on this thing and can’t get off!). I was starting to get sick and that was after only 3 spins, loosing all sense of balance really fast – but could do nothing but call out to Alvar to get me off!!! Alvar rescued me from this terror of a ride. When I got off, I couldn’t even walk straight – the whole world continued to spin as I walked along hanging desperately onto Alvar’s arm. It took a good minute or two for things to settle back down to normal (i.e. walk by myself!). I’ve learned my lesson now though; I’ll take a roller coaster any day instead of this thing.

We left Bad Bentheim and began looking for a place to eat some dinner. We typed in ‘restaurant’ in the GPS and somehow we ended up in Belgium! So, we thought, “why not!” and decided to stay and look for something good to eat. We came across a donair place – and because Alvar LOVES donairs we decided that we would eat there. The guy who served us didn’t speak any English, so that was a bit of an issue, but no worries, he found a customer in the restaurant who could help us out. Now, we assumed that the donairs would be the same here as they were back at home. Alvar usually orders extra meat because they tend to be kind of small otherwise. So, 7 out of the 9 of us ordered the donairs, 3 of the guys choosing the large size while the rest stuck with the regular. While sitting there we noticed one person eating something rather “large” at another table. We figured that was maybe the “big” one the guys had ordered (which consequently looked nothing like the donairs from back home!). Well, when the plates (or should I say cafeteria trays) came out, our eyes bulged and our chins dropped to the ground!! These were huge!!! Once again, the picture doesn’t do it justice – these things were absolutely massive (thankfully I actually ordered a pizza instead!!). Well, the boys did a fantastic job and ate the whole thing (and the girls with the medium sized ones too). We all had a good laugh over the food in the end, and it was even quite delicious, so well worth the size!

So, we visited 3 countries in one day, Holland, Germany and Belgium. I might never have the opportunity to do this again, today was quite the day – I think we all had a lot of fun. And, I really think that it justified the 300 pictures that I took – don’t you?