Day 9

I’m noticing that after I post on the blog each day, I take a look at our itinerary to see what the plan was for the next day. Then I take a quick peek at a few of the pictures to see if it’s going to be a big or little post. Then I spend the next ten minutes remembering all the little stories that happen during and in between the outing(s) of the day. I’ve come to realize that we really did a lot. Hands down, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many memories of places I’ve visited in a one and a half week time span in my entire life. It’s been fun remembering everything that we did; and now sharing it with all of you in our blog. It has brought back a lot of memories because when we first came home it seemed to be a bit of a whirlwind because of all we did! But, enough of that…time to move onto the next day…

Today we travelled to the Open Lucht Museum, just outside of Arhnem. This was quite similar to the pioneer villages we have around Ontario, just quite a bit bigger! We received our maps of the museum and walked around at our own pace (meeting back after a few hours). There was lots to see there, that’s for sure (unfortunately we had to share the museum with about 500 hyper school kids!!), and it was overall another enjoyable day learning of the days of old. There were lots of farmhouses, school houses, medical buildings, churches, train stations and windmills; pretty much anything you could think of was there – and often these buildings were actually brought in and restored in the museum (as opposed to creating them from scratch).

Inside one of the farmhouses

Outside the Millhouse

Leave it to me to take pictures of the kids' toys from years ago!

Lift bridge

Might be a tad hard to tell here, but there was mother duck with her babies, and for some reason or another, she had one yellow duck with the rest of her brown babies. It looked really funny as obviously the yellow duck really stood out!

This carriage was actually a virtual ride. You sat inside watching a t.v. screen which gave the illusion that you were actually taking a ride in a carriage! The carriage also moved back and forth a bit, so we even got the feeling that we were on a ride as well!

Windmill way out yonder!

This is me (duh!) at the top of the windmill. I will admit that it wasn't really my cup of tea. You could see thru the planks of wood all the way down (it was a long way!!), and I'm not a huge fan of heights - so the combination of those two made me a little queasy! I think that's actually as close as I got to looking over the edge too...and to think, I used to love rollar coasters (can you tell I'm getting older!).

Our next stop after the museum was Kasteel Hernen. Unfortunately we got there a tad late, and were unable to get inside :( Instead, we walked around the castle, getting as many “outside” pictures as possible. A few of us decided to walk from Hernen back to our windmill in Bergharen. The walk was nice although I almost passed out along the way. I hadn’t eaten enough that day (sight seeing is way more important than eating!) so we had to make a side trip to the local variety store so I could scarf down a couple bananas and a some granola bars – I felt much better after that!. After we got back home, we left again to go out for dinner.

We were waiting for this dinner with much anticipation; we would be treated to pannekoek! So off we went to a little restaurant called Sprookjeshof in the town of Appeltern. Very cute restaurant, totally geared to kids (nice playground outside, a ballroom inside and the walls were all decorated with fairytale type stuff). The pannekoek was delicious – you could pretty much have anything you wanted in/on it. I choose strawberries, icecream, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. YUM!! Alvar had one with bacon, and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed his too (maybe not quite as much as me, if I had a choice between bacon and chocolate, chocolate wins hands-down!).

"Sprookjeshof" Restaurant

My meal...mmm, mmm, mmm!!!

But, as much as the pannekoek was really good, my favourite part was when we used the “facilities” ;) Just take a look at the picture below and you’ll see why ;)

After supper we walked around Appeltern (to work off the pannekoek!). It was a beautiful town, very nice area to walk thru. There was even a house that was completely surrounded by a moat (one of Alvar’s “dream-house” ideas was right in front of him!). When we were ready to go back to the windmill, Alvar had the opportunity to drive the van. Although there was lots of “pretend” screams from the back…he did a great job! I have to admit that I would not like to drive at all, I found the signs so confusing and on top of that, you have to be really on the ball for all the bicyclers too! Alvar’s Dad did all the of the driving for us during our whole trip…minus the 7km Alvar drove that day!

Alvar's future house, surrounding by water :)

We walked around a nice path, taking us thru huge trees

Cool bridge in between the trees

Lots of ivy growing up the trees in Holland too

Nice brick bridge

Me feeding the sheep (well, it looks like it here, he didn't really eat the grass I picked for him, guess the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence!)

We returned home and enjoyed a game of Yahtzee; which we did regularly since we arrived at the windmill; there was a closet full of games there! We even managed to play a game of Risk too, which Alvar enjoyed immensely as he annihilated us very quickly!

I also wanted to show you a picture of our spider friend which hung out on one of the windows every night. It was an outdoor spider (thankfully) and it was huge!! I usually would check to make sure it was still on the outside of the door before going to bed, otherwise I’m sure if I didn’t see it, I would be up all night freaking myself out to where it could have possibly gone (i.e. in my bedroom).