Finally the Holland update

The Windy Beach






A beautiful canal in HollandThe expensive chinese food near where we stayed. What were we thinking?? It wasn't anything to call home about. The clogs I gotLauryn licking her chocolate from the pancakes we ate at the shoe factory. They are like crepes.The Pottery

Windmills

CHEESY Mike! :-)
Canoe ride at the amusement park

We had an absolute great time in Holland. It did however start out a bit bumpy. We had decided NOT to bring a cooler because we weren't sure if we'd get ice to re-fill it. But, after meeting up with our friends the Walkers who live on the way out the direction we were headed, they talked us into taking their cooler. So, we shopped at the commissary and filled the cooler up with fun foods that would make breakfast much more exciting. We headed to get ice when we were told the ice machine was broken and there wasn't any ice. WHAT??? We now had a cooler with food and no ice. So, we headed off down the road hoping that once out of Germany, we'd find ice. We stopped after Belgium, we stopped at a couple places in Holland all with the same reaction "Ice?" "I don't know what you are saying" Long story short, nowhere in the Netherlands sold ice. What were we thinking?? That night for dinner we ate a package of lunch meat, dozen eggs, a couple yogurts, lots of milk and some kind campers across the way put some of our milk and cheese in their cooler for us. We did end up losing quite a bit of food but oh well, lesson learned right? So, you're wondering what they do for coolers?? They use portable coolers half the size of my igloo that plugs into an electric outlet. Those smart people! No ice to slush around and make the food wet.
Ok, so we had fun at the amusement park. This park had a lot of fun rides. We went and saw some real working windmills and got to go inside one. It was pretty cool! We went inside a cheese factory and saw them making cheese. It was yummy gouda cheese. I could've sampled all day long there. Then, we went into a wooden shoe factory and watched them make the wooden clogs. I had to get me a pair for display of course! We ended our exploring that day by heading into Delft the town that is famous for the blue/white pottery. We went into the factory as well and got to learn how it's made.
We went to the beach except it was 65' and terribly windy. It was the only sunny day of the trip but it was too cold to enjoy the water. The kids had fun running through the waves but they didn't get completely wet.
Our trip was filled with a lots of fun memories. Our tent that we ordered didn't arrive in time so we rented a 6 man tent from the base. It held up through the pouring down rain that we enjoyed for most of the trip. WHEW, I was really worried we'd end up soaked!