Today we decided to stay close to home and check out some of the museums in Delft.
Miles learned a new trick on the way - to ride on the back of the stroller like Eliot. At the
Binnenwatersloot,
we stopped to check out the coot nest floating in the canal. We walked down Westvest past the Gemeente (city offices) and turned right toward the Prinsenhof.
The first place we visited was
Museum Nusantara, devoted to Indonesia. It's permanent exhibit shows the 400-year old link between Indonesia and the Netherlands. It has beautiful artwork, carved boats, clothing, and musical instruments from Indonesia. There was a temporary exhibit of some wonderful wood carvings that we all enjoyed.
Miles and Mary had fun listening to the wooden chimes outside the museum.
Next, we walked across the pedestrian path to
Museum Het Prinsenhof. This museum tells the story of William of Orange and the Golden Age of Delft. The exhibit includes some nice artwork and old Delft pottery. We even got to see the bullet hole in the wall where Willem of Orange was assassinated.
Miles fell asleep inside the museum. We lost Mary inside, so
we waited outside until she emerged!
We walked through the little garden next to the Prinsenhof.
Grandma, Eliot and I pose on the Delft pottery bench. We wandered on down toward the Oude Kerk and then Choorstraat.
Eliot and Grandpa headed out of the museum before Grandma and Mommy.
Eliot had a photoshoot with Grandpa posing on the wall while they waited for us to come out. Grandpa got some good shots of boy #1.
Bloemenveiling
Having missed the flower auction in Aalsmeer, we decided to try again at Flora Holland in Naaldijk. It's only about 30 minutes from Delft and very near the beach we went to with Ap and Gina. We found the facility pretty easily but spent 20 minutes driving around trying to find the touristen entrance. We got inside about 9:00 and arrived too late for the auction part. There was plenty going on at the
warehouse floor. We enjoyed seeing the flurry of activity delivering flowers with the carts.
Miles checks out the brochure to let us where to go next.
Grandma and Miles are ready to head to the Beach!
's Gravenzande
Our real agenda was the beach. It was supposed to be warm and we wanted to enjoy the sun and heat of summer.
Lots of other people had the same idea and the beach was crowded. Jim had to work, so he wasn't able to join us. We saw this
big boat cruising off the North Sea shore - it looked like it was filled with tourists.
The
boys enjoyed playing in the water with Mary and John. Eliot liked the waves hitting his belly. Miles was less sure about the constantly moving water, so he held on tight. He enjoyed having his feet dropped into the water. Of course, the boys also enjoyed playing in the sand.
Miles concentrates on his building task. Miles is looking quite studly in this picture.
Eliot transports some water up to the sand castle.
The boys and I dig in the sand.Miles tries to cover mommy with sand. We all work hard on our sandcastle using molds and shells to decorate it.
After a grand time at the beach and popsicles, we headed home to Delft. We took a detour to check out Hoek van Holland (literally corner of Holland). John wandered around briefly while the boys slept in the car with me. This is the mouth of the shipping canal heading to Rotterdam. We saw this really
cool car ferry coming over from England. It was huge.
Today was a day for recovery after our vacation and to take care of life: grocery shopping and laundry. It was also a day to start researching cameras. John and Mary kindly gave us a camera to replace our stolen one as early birthday gifts. John and I checked out models at a local electronics store.
Bath time! Grandma gave the boys a nice bath in the tub downstairs. Silly, crazy, wet boys!
As we were leaving the Batavia, we realized that no one had the camera. We were tired, and the boys were really tired and ready to leave. We must have set it down or lost it off our arm in a child hand-off somewhere on the boat. I took the boys down, and Jim and John scoured the ship to no avail. I am sure that someone just picked it up. We had not even been off the ship, so it's possible someone even saw us leave/drop it. [
We found out from Jim's colleague that the Batavia is known for pick pockets; the museum staff was sympathetic but indicated the camera was long gone; they didn't even have a lost and found.] The irony is that Jim and I had talked about downloading all of our pictures after lunch since the camera was full. We decided John's camera was better anyway for getting the boat pictures, so we didn't. We lost all of our vacation pictures and videos. I was just sick. I felt even worse because I had been through the entire set looking for pictures I could delete so I could take more. I can still remember which ones I took.
We went home via the N302: straight across the Ijsselmeer across the second dike in the Zuiderzee reclamation project. The reclamation was halted but the dyke remains connecting Lelystad with Enkhuisen. This is the scene from the road - water, birds, boats, and dyke for 30 km. We decided against stopping anywhere else and just headed home. No one was in the mood to sightsee or drag out the day - least of all me.
After a pizza-delivery dinner, we went to bed. Eliot (and I with him) cried about our lost pictures and videos. He didn't understand: "Why did someone steal our camera?" And he asked "can we go back and do all those things again to get more pictures?" He was most sad at losing his paddling video where he made zigzags. Luckily though, John was with us and we are glad to have his wonderful photos. Eliot and Grandma made a drawing of the canoeing adventure so "we could remember it."
Taking the long route home, we decided to check out a few museums in Lelystad, a city that used to be under water in the Zuiderzee (southern sea) at the turn of the century.
The Noord-Oost Polder was the first major piece of land to be reclaimed as part of the Zuiderzee reclamation scheme. The key to the project was the completion of the Afsluitdijk between North Holland and Friesland [provinces] in 1932, which separated the Zuiderzee from the open sea, thereby changing it from brine into the freshwater Ijsselmer lake. The draining of the polder was completed in 1936: once dried out, it provided 119,000 acres of new agricultural pasture, which the government handed out under an incentive scheme to prospective settlers. This reclamation project transformed the coastline north and west of Kampden and Elberg - cities in the former Hanseatic League that made their living by the sea.
The Dutch learned from their mistakes on the Noord-Oost Polder when, in the 1950s and 1960s, they drained the two polders that make up the western portion of the province of Flevoland, ringing the new land with a water channel to stop the surrounding land drying out and sinking. The governement also tried hard to make these polders attractive - they're fringed by trees and water-sport facilities. [Rough Guide]
The
Nieuwland Erfgoedcentrum is the country's definitive museum on land reclamation. It gives background on the Zuider Zee plan, and uses photos, old maps, models, historical film footage, and interactive computer programmes to illustrate the ongong struggle with the sea.
The oldest plan for closing off and reclamation of the Zuiderzee was devised in 1667 by Hendric Stevin, but was technically impossible at the time. Young engineer Corneliu Lely came up with a realistic plan for the closing off and partial reclamation of the Zuiderzee. Lely's plan formed the basis for the Zuiderzee act of 1918, which allowed for the construction of the Afsluitdijk (closing-off dyke). [museum literature] The museum had a wonderful aurdio tour and provided excvellent footage of the building of the Afsluitdijk.
Land from water
A polder is a piece of land surrounded by dykes and dams. Reclaimed lands are polders which were reclaimed from a lake or sea. Without dykes and artificial water control, during a flood approximately 65% of land surface of the Netherlands would be under water. There is a very good reason that the Corps of Engineers is consulting with Holland on water management. The Netherlands has in total almost 3900 polders.
Walls
Dykes are the walls of a polder, and precent the water outside from coming in. The layers of a dyke begin with a sandfilled trench where the foundation is weak. Then, 2 clay loam dams are constructed. Between these is the fill sand. The base of teh dyke is protected from the water by mattresses of willow rods weighted down with strones. Higher up the dyke comes a reed mattress with rubbles, with heave balast pillars. The dyke is covered with grass above the high tide mark.
Cultivation When the dykes were sealed and pumping-stations had removed the water via channels, locks, and field drains, the polder was still an impassable mud flat. Reeds were planted to promote the evaporation of water and its roots improve the stability of the ground. After the reeds were burned off, coleseed was planted; then followed the cultivation of various grains until finally, the ground was good for growing sugar beet, onions and potatoes. The entire cultivation took 5 to 7 years. SettlersFamers couldn't just up and move to the polders. They were selected by the Wieringer Lake Managment and RIJP, based on their agricultural knowledge, experience, capital and their "suitability" as a colonist. Farmers and their wives had to be ready and able to contribute to building a new society. The video interview we watched of the first settlers showed that they were truly pioneers and quite brave to embark on that adventure.
What would a museum be without a kids area. They know how to entertain kids. They had a few interactive areas for kids, but by far the most exciting was the water section. You could check out the different water pump techniques.
When the basin filled, it dumped on a man in a bathtub, compelete with toilet brush for his bath. Miles liked just simply floating the fish in the wooden clog along the water ways. Here you could build a dam,
close the lock, test out a siphon, and watch bubbles form in water. Every once in awhile a wind storm would kick up (we never figured out how to trigger it). Very cool.
Miles hops off the viewing platform via a slide. Here you see a clothesline and a cow behind the undies. Another area contained a archeological dig. The boys and I search for treasure. Surprisingly, they left the sand pretty quickly and went back to the water part. It was just too much fun.
Time for
a very Dutch lunch - though we would need a few more servings of fries, if we were truly Dutch. You have to love Jim's selection - gyro (mystery) meat on top of fries covered in gyro sauce. The boys let their shirts dry in the sun after their adventures in the water part of the Poldermuseum.
Miles and Eliot show off their bellies. 
Bataviawerf is a shipyard/museum that provides a look at traditional shipbuilding. Here, they have reconstructed two 17th century ships.
The reconstructed Batavia was completed in 1995 and sailed for 2 years to Australia and back. The original Batavia, a VOC merchantship, was built in 1628 for the United East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie). In June 1629, while making her maiden voyage, she foundered off the coast of Western Australia. Maybe they wanted to banish the bad juju.
The museum staff kindly switched the film to the English version, so we could watch the story of the reconstruction. We also smelled the spices that were typically brought back from the East Indies in these merchant ships: cloves, cinnamon, pepper, anise, among others. We toured the rigging workshop where they created the
blocks and ropes for the ship. They had a neat hands-on display showing how much easier it was to lift 10 kg with 7 blocks (pulleys) verses 1 block.
The boat is really neat with
awesome carvings all over the boat - bow, beakhead, sides, on the decks, stern. The size of the ropes, netting, and masts were immense. The ship itself made me feel a little claustrophobic, especially once you went below deck. The
kitchen was interesting and tiny - a 6x6 room lined with copper plating and bricks to prevent it from burning down the wooden ship. It must have been very hot in there. Below deck we saw casks,
cannons, and a toilet for the captain and his officers. Even the captain's quarters were pretty small.
Mary and Miles are poking out of the steering stand.
Today we decided to stay close to home and check out some of the museums in Delft. Miles learned a new trick on the way - to ride on the back of the stroller like Eliot. At the Binnenwatersloot, we stopped to check out the coot nest floating in the canal. We walked down Westvest past the Gemeente (city offices) and turned right toward the Prinsenhof. 
We walked through the little garden next to the Prinsenhof. Grandma, Eliot and I pose on the Delft pottery bench. We wandered on down toward the Oude Kerk and then Choorstraat.
Eliot and Grandpa headed out of the museum before Grandma and Mommy. Eliot had a photoshoot with Grandpa posing on the wall while they waited for us to come out. Grandpa got some good shots of boy #1.
Having missed the flower auction in Aalsmeer, we decided to try again at Flora Holland in Naaldijk. It's only about 30 minutes from Delft and very near the beach we went to with Ap and Gina. We found the facility pretty easily but spent 20 minutes driving around trying to find the touristen entrance. We got inside about 9:00 and arrived too late for the auction part. There was plenty going on at the warehouse floor. We enjoyed seeing the flurry of activity delivering flowers with the carts. Miles checks out the brochure to let us where to go next.
Grandma and Miles are ready to head to the Beach!
Our real agenda was the beach. It was supposed to be warm and we wanted to enjoy the sun and heat of summer. Lots of other people had the same idea and the beach was crowded. Jim had to work, so he wasn't able to join us. We saw this big boat cruising off the North Sea shore - it looked like it was filled with tourists.
After a grand time at the beach and popsicles, we headed home to Delft. We took a detour to check out Hoek van Holland (literally corner of Holland). John wandered around briefly while the boys slept in the car with me. This is the mouth of the shipping canal heading to Rotterdam. We saw this really cool car ferry coming over from England. It was huge.
We went home via the N302: straight across the Ijsselmeer across the second dike in the Zuiderzee reclamation project. The reclamation was halted but the dyke remains connecting Lelystad with Enkhuisen. This is the scene from the road - water, birds, boats, and dyke for 30 km. We decided against stopping anywhere else and just headed home. No one was in the mood to sightsee or drag out the day - least of all me.
