The Netherlands or The COOLEST TRIP EVER!!!!!!!!!!

Well, OK, we have had some pretty cool trips while we have been here, but from a civil engineers (who likes all things water) point of view this really was the coolest trip ever.

August bank holiday we headed over to the Netherlands for a long weekend. The holiday started with a night in a very bizarre hotel with a shower and toilet in the same room as the bedroom, but enclosed in frosted glass cylindrical floor to ceiling wall things. Citizen M if you are ever in the area. Then we picked up our trusty hire car and drove to our campground in Amsterdam. Talk about a dodgy area of town, we were in it! Anyway, we pitched our tent then it was off for an explore around the town. First stop was of course the sex museum which was pretty interesting and surprising busy. Perhaps I should point out that we didn't plan on going there but it was raining and we were passing so we thought why not. We then spent a few days walking around, looking at all sorts of random stuff and eating in all sorts of random places. We visited the Anne Frank house which was really enlightening and interesting. We did a canal boat tour, and we also went to the Van Gogh museum where we randomly ran into a friend of our from NZ who had stayed with us a few weeks before. I think Monique was as surprised as we were! We also wondered the flower markets...

Look at the pic above for some interesting seeds to buy....

Here is out little tent surrounded by a few other tents and you can't see this, but bathed in a fog of hash smoke. I was glad to get out of this place!

After Amsterdam it was on to the Hague and the main reason for a trip here was the MC Escher museum. I was totally thrilled with the amount of his work here, this in itself was worth the trip! While we stayed in the Hague, we hired some bikes and had a ride around a little bit. To be honest, I think I can control a bike quite well, however if it has back brakes (the ones where you have to pedal backwards to stop) then I can't ride a bike. Peter couldn't understand why I was getting frustrated and kept riding out into traffic or not stopping when going down hills (or getting off to walk down the hills). I was also not impressed that I couldn't get a decent map in my head of where we were which always throws me. Not the best part of the holiday.

Then, after the Hague it was on to THE most EXCITING part of the trip... The delta works!!!!

I could go on for hours but I wont bore you non engineers too much. The delta works are a number of large storm protection barriers to protect the Netherlands from storms. A large percentage of the Netherlands is below sea level and after a massive flood in 1953 the government invested a lot of money to protect the country from flooding.

So quite randomly we stopped at the first barrier and tried to find somewhere to take a photo and get a better look. We happened across an 'information' centre that doubled as a restaurant. We asked about the barrier and if there was somewhere we could take a photo and they charged us 6 euro each, I was like, well pay the money I want to get a closer look! So we paid out money and we were led into a room (still with no decent view of the barrier) and we waited... On the wall was this map of some of the barriers...

Then a man came in and showed us into a smaller room and said there was a half hour video to watch then we could go on the tour. So we watched a video about the floods and then about the construction of the barriers, I was in heaven and we hadn't even got started! Once they were finished we then got a private tour all the way up to the barrier and then inside!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The photo above is us inside the big triangular section behind me in the photo below. For the engineers in the crowd there are two sets of radial sluice gates, one on the sea side and one on the estuary side. They usually remain up to allow the seawater and river water to mix. Check out the grin! Oh and the size of those radial sluice gates!

Then it was on to barrier number two. This one had a whole water park with exhibitions and demos and all sorts of other things. So this barrier is also a sluice gate but this isn't radial. It is big!!!

As part of the tour there was a boat ride which gives a better view of the gates...

And of course there is a kids water playground... I want one of these! Peter did get a little embarrassed that I was the only 'adult' playing :-)

Then sadly it was time to go and find a bed for the night. Alas we couldn't find a decent campsite so we stayed in a hotel. The staff there were a little surprised to get English speaking people, let alone English speaking people from NZ! We headed over the 60m sand dune to the beach for a little look at the sea.

And I couldn't resist building a dam while Peter took pictures.

Then the last day of the trip before heading home we stopped off to see some windmills. Imagine my delight when I realised they were all just an elaborate and fancy pumping system for water!

Now can you see why this was the COOLEST TRIP EVER!!!! It's going to be hard to beat this one I think.

There are a few more photos on our photo website...