Dit verhaaltje is in het Engels omdat het special bedoeld is voor Bob & Joyce, onze vrienden van Long Island (NY, USA). Zij zijn nu in Wenen en gaan de Donaucruise maken die we eigenlijk samen zouden doen als het gekund had vanwege mijn lijf op het moment. Maar onze tijd komt nog wel hoor ....

Saturday 21 July at 12:35 Bob and Joyce arrived at Schiphol Airport. They came from Durham-Teeside in England after a visit to their British friends. We packed their luggage in the car and drove past Amsterdam, through Coentunnel (under IJ, where they were 2 years ago on the Prinsendam) and continued past Zaanstad, Purmerend and Hoorn to Wieringermeer. We stopped at a restaurant and had lunch there. Wieringermeer is the first of the 4 big IJsselmeerpolders (all reclaimed land).

We got back in the car and passed fisheries harbor Den Oever at the beginning of Afsluitdijk. Afsluitdijk is a 32 km long dam (about 20 miles) connecting the province of Noord-Holland with the province of Friesland. We passed a set of locks and stopped at the Monument where the you can see the Ijsselmeer (former Zuiderzee, branch of the Atlantic) on one side and Waddenzee, part of Noordzee (Atlantic) on the other. At the other end another set of locks. We entered Friesland, the province with its own language (not a dialect). We stopped in Makkum for a visit to the Tichelaar pottery, a firm dating back to 1452 making beautiful earthenware.

After that we took them home to IJlst where they stayed at Stadsherberg IJlst and had dinner at our house.

Sunday 22 we took Afsluitdijk again to Hoorn and parked in Hoorn. We went on an old steam train to Medemblik. We had some poffertjes on the train (very small pancakes). The train took us to Medemblik where we got off. We transferred to MS Friesland (a heritage steamboat). We sailed from Medemblik to Enkhuizen in lovely sunny weather and passed Lighthouse De Hoek before arriving at the Zuiderzeemuseum. This is an open-air museum with relocated houses from elsewhere, built as a village. It was good to walk through the museum to see what life in the old days used to be like. Through the present day city of Enkhuizen we walked to the railway station and took a modern train back to Hoorn and droive home from there.

Monday 23 July Jan took Bob for a short walk to our two windmills while Joyce made an email for friends and family on our computer. After that we left for a visit of our own district. Friesland has 11 cities. IJlst is one of them, the second one we saw was the smallest, Sloten (we had oranjekoek here) We did not go to Stavoren, but stopped in Hindeloopen and saw the painted wood and the old church plus the marina. In Workum we just passed as the Grote Kerk (big church) is under restauration. We stopped once again in Bolsward where Bob bought a Frisian cap and where we made pictures of the old townhall and of Broerenkerk (church ruin with glass roof). After that Sneek was the last city we visited. We saw the old Waterpoort there (Watergate). So of the 11 cities in Friesland they have seen 6 (just missed Stavoren, Harlingen, Franeker, Dokkum and province capital Leeuwarden).

Tuesday 24 July we packed the car and started driving to the south. We passed Lemmer, entered the next IJsselmeerpolder called Noordoostpolder (province of Flevoland) and passed Emmeloord. Back on the mainland we were in the province of Overijssel and passed Kampen before entering Oostelijk Flevoland, polder number 3. We followed the polder dike and crossed the bridge to the province of Gelderland, where the small city of Elburg is. It has lovely pebbled pavements and a nice city gate. Back to the polder again and continuing to Almere in Zuidelijk Flevoland (polder number 4). Back to the mainland again and into the province of Utrecht. Passed the big city of Utrecht, right in the centre of the Netherlands and one of our oldest cities dating back 2000 years. We saw the high-rise of the university buildings. We passed 2 branches of river Rhine and stopped for lunch in Meerkerk in the province of Zuid-Holland. From there we entered Alblasserwaard an 18^th century swamp area dried out by windmills. We drove along the dikes boarding river Waal (the main stream of river Rhine) to the village of Kinderdijk. In Kinderdijk are 19 windmills; together they are a UNESCO World Heritage. We took a boat ride there to see them close by. Afterwards on to our hotel in Zwijndrecht on the boards of river Oude Maas. And the weather kept behaving itself, temperatures were getting higher and higher.

Wednesday 24 July after loading the car we worked our way back to the highway and turned south again. Passed Moerdijkbrug across Haringvliet and turned west to the small city of Willemstad in the province of Noord-Brabant. There we walked through town a bit and had coffee. Bob ordered 'limonade' and had the waitress confused. He thought it would be something with lemon, but they got him sirop with water instead (red-coloured). We explained a lemon in dutch is a 'citroen' and that limonade is just a group name for cola, 7-up, bitter lemon and other soft drinks and for people who do not want gassed lemonade it will be what Bob got. It was nice and cold though. Temperatures meanwhile were rising to unpleasant levels as it was very humid.

We carried on to the south and drove through Jan's birth town of Steenbergen passed the house he lived in and outside town passed where he was born. We were 40 km north of Belgium then, so almost at the other end of the country. We went west across Sint Philipsland into the province of Zeeland. We drove over some of the dams that are part of our Deltaplan to protect the land from the see. We had lunch at Grevelingendam . Then we saw more dams and some tunnels. We passed to big harbor city of Rotterdam where traffic was rather hectic. Because of the heat we decided to skip Delft this time (whenever you two come back, we promise to take you there ), passed The Hague (Den Haag), all back in Zuid-Holland again and continued through the Groene Hart (Green Hart) . We passed the aqueduct of Haarlemmermeer into Noord-Holland and stopped at Van der Valk Hotel Schiphol A4. There we spent our last night together and had dinner on the terrace of the hotel.

Thursday 26 July we had breakfast together and we waved goodbye to Bob and Joyce when they got in the hotel bus to Schiphol at 8:40 for their flight to Vienna. We went back to Friesland where I had my second treatment at the hospital later in the morning. We would have loved to join them as planned on the continuation of their trip to Vienna and on the Danube cruise from Budapest, but it was not to bee this time. It was great having them here and showing them part of our country. Oh, and for your statistics Bob, of out 12 provinces you only missed 3 Groningen, Drenthe, Limburg). We did about 900 km or 560 miles.