Netherlands, part II, January 2007

We spent a whole day at Open Air Museum. It was well worth it.


The following few pictures are from the inside exhibitions- how things used to be.

Dutch tradition shoes made of wood and worn with several pairs of woolen socks inside.

I was impressed by the type of bed people used to sleep 'in'... One slept in a sitting position, because it was a common believe that if one lies down to sleep one will die.

The costumes of different times and regions.

This is church-going attire.

Just see those evel eyes :))))) brrrrrr....

This is kind of an oven.

One of my favorite pictures.

The hay ''holder''... As the hay wasused up, the roof would slide down untill its empty...

In the foreground you can see a pigeon house. People used to eat them too.



Those are called friendship trees (linden trees?), they are specially made to looks this way with branches joining together.

Seems like this sheep is very very aware of how pretty it is.

I really like the cheerful colors of the buildings and other things in Netherlands.

That`s where the lover of the oldest daughter used to leave his shoes before climbing in thru the window :))

Some honey.





And then there was a pretty large garden with animals....topiaries :))



This one seems to be a playful kitten.




Two kinds of roosters!

I simply liked this serene scene. Looks like October in Latvia.

Washing machines!

This little donkey seemed to like me a lot! A shared feeling.

Well, this one is interesting. My friend told me that in days long ago poor people had a right to build their homes and live on rich landlord`s property...with one condition- the house had to be made overnight and without being caught! This is one example of such creation! :) The landlord could get mad all he wanted, but could not do much about it.

This is how tiny special pancakes are made (they are called poffertjes). Yummm with some powdered sugar and butter!

The Open Air museum looks amazing at night, we stayed back on purpose just to see all the light displays and lighted buildings and wind mills.

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On the way...

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Our next stop was Gouda, a famous city in the whole world because of the cheese made there... and not only, as you will see.


At first in Gouda we visited St Johns church (to wait out the peak of the storm). It`s the biggest church of the nethelrands (From the leaflet: 123 meters long, The windows depict scenes from biblical and national history, partly made between 1555 and 1572, the rest finished between 1594 and 1603).




Really amazing stained glass windows.

Then we proceeded to the city museum adjacent to church. The ticket was same for both places.

This is a place where old blueprints of churche`s stained glass windows are being restored. Quite impressive too.

Some of the exhibits in the museum were of quite contemporary art.

Apothecary of old days.

I don`t really want to know what they are doing to this poor buggar...

And now from inspiring to less pretty things! The torcher chamber........................

Spanish horse in all its glory! Immagine the pleasant and easy task of spending the whole day on this horse!

Pictures speak clearer than words sometimes. This just shows how strong the wind was on that day.

The city hall below really impressed me.

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There was a huge storm going on for a couple days, we drove on some islands in the south and went for a walk in sand dunes. I could not get the sand off my face afterwards and later discovered about half a pound of sand in each of my pockets! :)

Below you can see the wind reading in the car. The actual wind gusts reached about 120 km/h, but that was a couple hours before we reached the dune. It was still bad enough.

It is possible to see the sand being blown by the wind. It seems like the wings of the wind generators were blocked as not to get damaged by the storm. We hardly escaped a huge downpour

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One of my most favorite towns from the ones I saw is Veere. Very quiet and picturesque with lots of greenery, boats, historical buildings and so on. We came there almost at dusk and it was dark when we were leaving.




This is an actual whale bone hanging there.

A very nice mix: city on one side and a country side on the other.

We were practicing taking pictures in dark. I think they are quite good. But it was mostly for fun! It`s not easy to do that during a storm.