February flowers and the cow pasture cafe

A crisp, but sunny February has brought early flowers and unanticipated afternoons on some of our favorite local terraces.



Orionweg, thick with crocuses.

Gementeehuis, Bloomendaal.

Kleverlaan - the first daffodils.

Behind the Grote Kerk is always a good bet on a sunny afternoon for warm chocolade met slageroom.

The "cow pasture cafe" - not it's real name, but one of our absolute favorites. This fence marks the end of the city and is a great place to put your feet up and catch a few rays after a nice bike ride through the dunes.

Northern Provinces

It was a beautiful, yet cold winter Sunday so we decided to head a little further afield and explore the northern provinces of Friesland and Groningen. I've been excited to do this for some time now because it meant a good excuse to finally drive across the Afsluitdijk....a 30 KM dike that seperates the Wadenzee (kind of the North Sea) from the inland Ijselmeer. This dike was built in 1927 and part of the original plan was to polder the entire sea (make it into land). They ended up creating Flevoland - the first and largest polder. It is amazing to see the reclamed land. This is where we went for the amusement park featured on this blog some time ago. They also diked off the Markemeer, intending to turn this into the next polder. But a significant environmental movement prevented that from happening. The entire history can be summerized with this wikipedia entry: Zuiderzee works. As the saying goes...God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland. Pretty cool to see it in action. Anyhow, here are a few pics from the day.

The dijk looking west from the lookout tower monument seen on the map above.

Two cold tourists taking the photo.

The 14th century water port in the interesting little village of Sneek.

A large square in the the university town of Groningen.

We're still not sure if we could ever live in a full blown (dominated) university town, but we sure love the refreshing vibe of these towns. This photo illustrates it pretty well. A group of students hanging out outside of a 14th century building (now a pub), which has been seemlessly integrated into the present with the glass overhang and frivously decorated with artwork (see the flying trapeeze guys under the glass?)