By Jud Niven

It was a good weather day, probably one of the better days for Sunshine and no rain.  I understand that Alberta has been getting lots of intense thunderstorms this past week.

Today we drove to the Province of North Holland, in particular the city of Alkmaar. There is lots of road construction(same around the world) and we general try to avoid the major highways, so we went the long way.  The long way included driving over a shortcut actually…a dyke that stretched across the water from Lelystad to Enkhuizen.

Overhead shot of the dyke we drove on. Quite the engineering marvel!

Every Friday Alkmaar has a Cheese Festival that celebrates cheese making and how they would sell it, a tradition and ritual really that dates back to 1365.  Here is a link to their website that explains the whole history.  ALKMAAR CHEESE HISTORY.

Along with the hi-jinks of Cheese handling there was also a market going on all through the town centre which we perused and bought some tasty cheese.

After a beer and some lunch we ventured on to check out some of the beaches along the north sea.  Very nice little places with tonnes of beach area and places to stay.

A beach in the town of Bergen aan Zee

The rest of the drive home consisted of several red lights and several wrong turns.  A wrong turn is never really wrong because whereever we end up…we’ve never been there before!

By Jud Niven

Thursday July 14, 2016

We woke up this morning to nice weather and an optimistic forecast for the day so we decided to go into Amsterdam.  A 10 ten minute drive to the train station in Amersfoort and then a 30 minute train ride to Amsterdam Central.  We first stopped for some patats(Fries) they serve it up in a paper cone-yummy! Most of the locals eat it with mayonnaise.  We then carried on weaving through the city with our main goal of getting to the Van Gogh Museum, which is located behind the Rijksmuseum. All in all it was about a 3km walk with lots of neat sights in between.  The Van Gogh Museum was amazing! I learned many things about Vincent, where as before I just knew him as the guy that cut his ear off.  He only painted for 10 years, he was most prolific when he was in an asylum(he produced one painting every day while he was in treatment) and he was 37 when he shot himself in the chest and died 2 days later.  We took the tram back to the train station and headed home, but we will go back.  Gloria and I plan on going into Amsterdam ourselves and staying overnight.

Tomorrow we are getting up early and driving to Alkmaar, which is about 85 kms North West of where we are staying.  Every Friday there is the worlds largest Cheese Market and then we’ll check out the beaches.

Amsterdam Central Station

Delicious Patats(Fries)

Nothing like eating fries and people watching!

The Flower Market in the heart of downtown Amsterdam

Van Gogh Museum

The #5 Tram

Tuesday July 12, 2016

By: Jud Niven

The Westerbork transit camp was a World War II Nazi refugee, detention and transit camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometers north of Westerbork, in northeastern Netherlands. -wikipedia

Monday July 11, 2016

By: Jud Niven

Amersfoort is a municipality and the second largest city of the province of Utrecht in central Netherlands. The city is growing quickly but has a well-preserved and protected medieval centre. – from Wikipedia

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Monday was little more laid back.  We have pretty much fallen into a good sleep pattern and got up at a good time.  We took Gloria’s folks to visit her cousin Avery for his birthday.  He lives in a beautiful town called Lauren. The four Nivens decided to go to Amersfoort which is a big city not far from where we are staying. This place is like a smaller version of Amsterdam.  Lots of stores and pubs in all shapes and sizes.  Our first stop was for some lunch at bakkerij bart.  A walk in, counter service kind of bakery and sandwich shop.  LOVE the sausage rolls and the boys love the Pizza Bread, plus the free wifi from McDonalds across the street came in handy as well.

A little more walking around and some shopping then onto a canal tour of the city.  Like most places in Europe, Amersfoort is rich in history and the canal tour revealed a lot of cool facts about their Medievil roots. It was all in Dutch but the skipper of the boat spoke very good English and he was happy to translate for us. Well worth it for 5 Euros.

Sunday July 10, 2016

By: Jud Niven

Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands. Friesland has 646,092 inhabitants. The capital is Leeuwarden – from wikipedia

Sunday we got up after a decent sleep.  Jet-lag was still kinda messing with us, but we got ourselves organized and headed out on the road. We traveled north to the Province of Friesland, the birthplace of Gloria’s Mom and Dad-Harry and Tina. They have their own language and it is quite different from Dutch.  The first leg of the trip we stopped at the McDonald’s in Joure, which has become a bit of a tradition.

From there we headed to Nijland (pronounced N-eye-loan), Tina’s birthplace.  We visited the Church where a lot of Tina’s family are buried.  We also tried and were unsuccessful at finding a Geocache in the area.

It was a quick 10 km drive west to Harry’s hometown of Parrega and also did a little tour of his old house and his Church.  Their hometowns and every little village that we drive through just amazes us with how they look.  So old and so well cared for and SUCH narrow streets.  Everyone here has grown up with no fear of the very small window of error you’re afforded while driving down a small town road.

Now look north and west and head up another winding, narrow little road 10 kilometers to Makkum for the last town of today’s travels. We grabbed an icecream and then walked along the inlet.

By Ethan Niven

You haven’t been to Iceland unless you have seen the icebergs flow through the chilling rich dark blue waters of the  North Atlantic on the shores of Iceland.   We arrived at Edmonton Wednesday July 6th at about 5:00pm we stayed for one night at My Ants house. On July 7th we had wok box for diner at the airport then at 6:30pm we started boarding the plane.  The first Plane flight was about Five and a ½ hour  but then the first  Plane landed at 6:40am Iceland time The plane landed we had to wait 10 minutes or more then we got off the plane and went through customs then had to hustle to board the next plane.  That flight was two and a ½ hours to Amsterdam then we drove to Acornnest with my Grandmas cousins Avert and Sippe.  That is what has happened so far in this Holland trip thanks for reading our blog Niven the Good life.

Iceland from the plane

We’re at it again!  It seems like so long ago that we decided to go to Holland again and then we started planning.  I guess it was awhile ago, but the time is now fast approaching.  This time we are going by way of Icelandic Air with a quick layover in Reykjavík, so we’ll be able to say we’ve been to Iceland…..Twice!  We have lots planned and we’re all very excited to go on more adventures.  We will endeavor to get Ben and Ethan to submit their views and some photos.

Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial

July 13- Sunday we drove to The Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial is located about three kilometres north of the village of Groesbeek, Netherlands. The cemetery contains 2,338 Canadian soldiers of World War II.

The cemetery is unique in that many of the dead were brought here from nearby Germany. It is one of the few cases where bodies were moved across international frontiers. It is believed that all fallen Canadian soldiers of the Rhineland battles, who were buried in German battlefields, were reinterred here (except for one who is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery). General H.D.G. Crerar, who commanded Canadian land forces in Europe, ordered that Canadian dead were not to be buried in German soil.

Thousands of Dutch children tend the graves of the soldiers buried here as they do throughout the Netherlands.