28 April ’04, Wednesday. Last night we decided to hole up one more day to see if we could get ourselves feeling better prior to Keukenhof. Well, that was last night… we did sleep in till 9:30 but after our hot shower and breakfast we were all checked out and heading off to see the gardens of Keukenhof and all the flower fields on the way. Very impressive sight with all the tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth. It truly was a rainbow of bulb variety all set among the huge trees, ponds, falls, and lakes. This was all put together by a sculpture of fine art. The sun was hidden until we arrived and when it came out we were shown a unique and magnificent display. I even hate to say it but the only disappointment was the food. Expensive and I wish I could say tasteless but, I can’t. We spent about 4 hours at Keukenhof and Louise got the map out and back on the road we went. We headed N, NE and ended up at Edam on the shores of “Markermeer”. First I would like to tell you about the Markermeer. This was a “Sound” of the North Sea until the Dutch decided to seal off the mouth of the inlet with a very long dike. Now this large body of water is all fresh water and is about 10 feet below sea level (North Sea). They also developed a large land mass and this became “Flevoland” (New Land). More on both of these later…. Edam used to be a renowned whaling port. Now it is not only known for it’s beach location, unique canals, hand operated draw bridges, but during the summer it is famous for its cheese market. Would you believe 250,000 pounds of cheese is marketed each year? The cheese industry and the whaling go back to the 15th Century.
As we were just getting into putting the meat on the barbecue the cloud cover started to build real fast and all of a sudden lightning and thunder started to let go on us. This was soon followed by rain of course. We were able to save everything just before the rain came in and as we sat down to eat we were treated to our second large thunder and lightning show in 2 nights. Tomorrow we will leisurely head North.
As we were just getting into putting the meat on the barbecue the cloud cover started to build real fast and all of a sudden lightning and thunder started to let go on us. This was soon followed by rain of course. We were able to save everything just before the rain came in and as we sat down to eat we were treated to our second large thunder and lightning show in 2 nights. Tomorrow we will leisurely head North.