Scenes from my days last week

Starting my 4th week away from home! Monday- June 27.

I left you on Wednesday Morning last week and I nearly forgot a few pictures from our Wednesday evening jaunt. Then it's on to Thursday, Friday and Saturday's scenes and I'll do a post for our adventure on Sunday on it's own.

 Even tho The Netherlands are known for their many and beautiful Canals, we are not so much in those areas. We've seen some smaller ones, and this one was close to the area where we were on Wed. eve.  Frederik likes to show me the sights, and I've enjoyed being able to see the everyday views fairly close to "home" I am looking forward to seeing more Canal sights before I come home, possibly from Amsterdam where the City there is full of them.

 This view was taken on one side of the highway looking at the Canal--see how high the water is here?

 And here we have the other side of the highway. The water was quite a ways down, although this zoomed in picture doesn't show it as much. I meant to take a picture of the information sign that told us.   I've seen travel films in the past of the Canals and locks and how they work, but it was fun to actually see one in person. 

 We just pulled off the road and could climb up some steps and view it from above.  I was hoping I didn't lose grip on my phone & have it plunge to the depths.  It gave me a bit queasy feeling to lean over that fence there ! :D

You can read more about them here:  https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0LEVr7T.3BXRrIAfTEnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEyajcyZTVzBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDQjIzMzlfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=Canals+and+Locks+How+They+Work&fr=yhs-mozilla-004&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004  
and hopefully I'll have more "in person" photos to show later in my stay.

 Here's just a little piece of something that I saw snaking thru the country in this area.  I wondered what it was, as it sure was big!  Can you guess?  I couldn't.  Frederik explained that we were in the area of a landfill, and here they try to recycle everything.  Instead of burying the landfill items, they burn them!  This pipe transfers the heat from the burning to a salt factory be used in the evaporation process.  How's that for recycling energy!

Also in our jaunt thru a nearby village we spotted this down the street!  Now that looks more American than anything I've seen since I left home! (well, as far as eating places!)


Thursday--

Friday--

Saturday--

Do you see a pattern here?  LOL!  In other words, It may be sunny, it may be rainy and it may be both within a matter of an hour!  Regardless we've had some (or alot) of rain every day again last week.

It doesn't stop anyone from being out and about, just make sure you have your umbrella with you, even if you're riding your bike!

Thursday was Frederik's brother's birthday, so he and his parents came over for the evening & supper.  I had met his brother already, but it was nice to get to meet his parents! They know some English, so we weren't totally at a loss for conversing :)

I was introduced to a new game, I took one look at it and said it looks like a table top version of bowling,  (which isn't too much of a stretch!) I'm horrible at bowling, so I didn't expect to do too well at this game, but it really was fun, both to play and to watch!

I can't explain the scoring method, but each of those slots gave you a different score--and how many you had in which ones.  The slots are JUST large enough for one disk to slide tho, and it really isn't easy to get them into the exact spot to shoot thru! Then of course the more you have piled up outside, the harder it is to shoot one thru the opening!  Each player has three turns, chances to get all the disks thru.  (when you use all the disks, you gather the ones up that didn't go thru & re-play those) to get your score for that round.  Incidentally, I did NOT have beginners luck!  haha! ;)


Checking out the ads to see if we need to go shopping--We can prepare for the upcoming Holiday.  Oh, wait a minute, July 4 is an American holiday!  But--looks like we can celebrate it here in AMERICAN style even if we're in Holland!!

 No offense here, but there is NOTHING like Nebraska (and I'm sure many other places in the USA) Beef!  :)  Just sayin'!

 I have to say, this really tickled my funny bone.  I do realize that we (in the US) tend to have appliances for about everything, but hey, if you're having a party, a hotdog maker that only cooks two dogs/buns at a time isn't going to be very efficient.  I did mention everything is smaller here.....  ;)

 And can you tell me how "American pancakes" are different than any other pancakes   (Well other than dutch apple pancakes, or German skillet pancakes....)

Here's a few yummy things we've found--these chips are super good & "real"! 

About as clean eating as you can get--and yummy too!

 Back to Laura's garden for a bit today--It's doing quite nicely! See those blooms on the tomato vine?!

 As always I'm enchanted with all the flowers here.  They grow so lushly and beautiful!

 

 I love this hedge that runs along the sidewalk near the gardens.  It is so dense!

On Saturday it was rainy again (Imagine that!) and Frederik needed to go to another town to pick something up so he took us to a 2nd hand store there also.  Did I mention how fantastic the 2nd hand stores are here?  Full of everything, and most reasonable prices also.  It's a good thing I brought all that extra luggage along--hahaha!
I think I forgot to mention earlier a week or so ago we went to a "goodwill" and it was full of beautiful old furniture.  And for crazy cheap prices compared to what we find those things at home for.  $35-$60 for what we'd see for several hundred dollars at our antique stores.  a gorgeous old piece that was $125, that would be at least $6-700 at home.  Yikes!  I could furnish a house here quite in-expensively!

It's been really hard to get any sunset pictures, Even tho we are right on the edge of town, there are still so many trees you can't see it well.  Of course when we've had all this cloudy rainy weather, that takes care of seeing one also!  Today was an exception, and even tho it had a ways to go before it was "set" yet, I liked our view above the rooftop & trees here.  (These are out the front living room window)

Thanks for visiting, Next stop --- our Sunday afternoon adventure!