Yay; spent the day waking up probably too late from the night before, but promptly picking up the car again at Central Station and headed South to Den Haag. We stopped first at the Maeslant Storm Surge Barrier just south of Den Haag. This crazy place is designed to react to a storm surge and push out massive, massive arms into the canal - blocking the incoming surge and protecting the country from flooding. Rotating arms and barriers spread out, fill with water, sink, and block the surge. When it recedes, the arms float and swing back in. An engineering marvel.
From there we drove (got lost numerous times) and finally made it to Den Haag and spent a couple hours at Madurodam. This is a crazy park that has the main features of the Netherlands represented in 1/25 scale to a detail that is both mesmerizing and disturbing... We spent quite a while here, learning about the country, taking notes of new places to visit, and admiring the places we were already familiar with.
After this crazy-ness, we went to the bunkers in Scheveningen. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, imagine WWII German bunkers on the beach, now imagine them abandoned, now imagine them abandoned, with a couple desolate, eclectic bars at the base of them on the sands of the ocean. Aaron and I loved it of course, and jumped the barbed wire fences to hide in the grass and gradually make our way to one of the underground trenches which interconnects to the maze of command posts and gun bunkers.
We left there hungry and tired after walking through the sands, and I sped home at least 20km over the speed limit back to Central Station where we ditched the car and came home for pasta and cracked the mini-barrel of Heineken before passing out - listening to the German, Dutch, Italian, and Russian laughing and talking on their way to and from hotels and hostels in our neighborhood. We are feeling less and less like tourists...
Yay; spent the day waking up probably too late from the night before, but promptly picking up the car again at Central Station and headed South to Den Haag. We stopped first at the Maeslant Storm Surge Barrier just south of Den Haag. This crazy place is designed to react to a storm surge and push out massive, massive arms into the canal - blocking the incoming surge and protecting the country from flooding. Rotating arms and barriers spread out, fill with water, sink, and block the surge. When it recedes, the arms float and swing back in. An engineering marvel.
From there we drove (got lost numerous times) and finally made it to Den Haag and spent a couple hours at Madurodam. This is a crazy park that has the main features of the Netherlands represented in 1/25 scale to a detail that is both mesmerizing and disturbing... We spent quite a while here, learning about the country, taking notes of new places to visit, and admiring the places we were already familiar with.
After this crazy-ness, we went to the bunkers in Scheveningen. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, imagine WWII German bunkers on the beach, now imagine them abandoned, now imagine them abandoned, with a couple desolate, eclectic bars at the base of them on the sands of the ocean. Aaron and I loved it of course, and jumped the barbed wire fences to hide in the grass and gradually make our way to one of the underground trenches which interconnects to the maze of command posts and gun bunkers.
We left there hungry and tired after walking through the sands, and I sped home at least 20km over the speed limit back to Central Station where we ditched the car and came home for pasta and cracked the mini-barrel of Heineken before passing out - listening to the German, Dutch, Italian, and Russian laughing and talking on their way to and from hotels and hostels in our neighborhood. We are feeling less and less like tourists...
2 comments:
I see that there is a space that I can leave a comment. Really, the main one I have is that I'm incredibly jealous of all of you, but I'm happy that you're all having such a good time. Adam, you're to be commended for your blog; it's extra time and energy for you. But I've enjoyed it. Thanks. And love to all.
Philip
Your pictures and stories are wonderful Adam.I'm so glad you get to be there! Thanks for sharing!
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