The Week in Pictures!

A main principle of Education 200: do not write/explain that which you can bring across visually or experientially (or something like that). I'm not entirely sure what that means yet, but if this post includes mainly pictures I think it means that I should receive some bonus marks Miss Dianne...?

A Monday afternoon bike ride along a newly discovered dike. The very next day I had to go to a place near here. It took me 1 hour to get to the place. In the rain and wind. The way back took 15 minutes once I discovered how close I was to this area. GRRR! But I guess this tendency-to-get-lost-ia (it's pretty much a medical condition after causing such high blood pressure) is good for seeing scenery that I wouldn't typically! Hmm, but maybe that's just the 'crazy optimist' that someone called me once.  Really I think they might be wise. Maybe I should ask them how to avoid getting lost EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! (o dear, there goes the blood pressure again)!

 

Letters from Canada, woohoo!

A 4 euro pair of boots!

Spring in Rotterdam

I'm pretty sure no perfume can capture this scent!

A snapshot of Amsterdam

I had to do a project on Caribbean history, so I had to visit an Amsterdam museum to complete the assignment. It is a city that was not destroyed by German bombs as Rotterdam was. Some of the buildings and streets are from even the early 1600's!

An Acting University

 

The tallest of these building was made in the 1600's! Many of these old buildings have large plaques on the front with the building date.

Did you know that the reason for steeples originated with the idea that the steeple would be shaped to point to heaven? (Credits to Catechism lessons back in the day...more bonus points deserved here I think pastor!)

Attempting to look Marie Antoinettish. Holding a Marie Antoinette pose becomes slightly difficult after about 5 camera clicks that don't work! This castle is in Utrecht, and belongs to a very wealthy family. We got to tour the interior. Much of it was gold, silks, high ceilings... incredible!

 

Part of the tour group. We had 1.5 hours to explore on our own, so we found a tourist info center. There were three interesting looking museums that we decided to check out. When we finally arrived at the first one, it wasn't as interesting as it had appeared. So we quickly took a picture and headed to the next one. At this point we only had enough time to visit one, and we decided to take a picture here and go on to the next one. However, when we finally arrived at this third one there was no longer time to explore it before heading back, so we took a picture and headed back. So we got to see the city on foot by the most part! It is very old, lots of unique shops, so fun!

The Roman Catholic Church in Utrecht. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that this building carries footsteps of Martin Luther. The evidence of the iconoclasm from the Reformation times can still be seen as well!

This museum was called the 'Speelkok.' It gave a history of wind up musical clocks, and also organs! A lot of my travel mates were bored to death, but for this girl it was the greatest!

Domkerk of Utrecht, it's too massive to get on one photo! This is the same church as the previous photo, and we actually climbed to the top. On the top third of this church you can see two narrow columns. The staircase was in one of these!

After an entire day of walking we had to climb 95 m, but the view and experience of climbing these ancient tiny corridors was absolutely stunning!

And yesterday was just mooi! (Dutch for beautiful, I just had to get that in :) After the morning service we headed to Hoek van Holland, the bottom corner of the country along the Sea. We were told very emphatically many times that it wasn't the ocean, but really one could see salt water to the furthest horizon...

 

One of our 'tour guides' used to study ship engineering, so he was explaining about the genius methods used by the Dutch, regarding dikes, ocean liners etc. It really blew my mind!

Playing on the beach in early March!

Just after a large wave came over the other side of the barrier and caught us by surprise a little too early for us to move out of its way

 

So it was a very good week overall, and I hope you all have a wonderful week as well!