Netherlands Day 6 - New Beaches, Old Streetses

Today we went out with some more wonderful family members to see what the Schagen area has to offer. We started at a new beach, and when I say 'new beach' I mean that this piece of land didn't exist a couple years ago.  The Dutch are experts at moving dirt from underwater to make land. In the course of one year they dug up enough sand from under the sea to create an entirely new beach equipped with dunes and a dike that is miles long. For you Michigan people, imagine if only the campground part of Holland Beach existed and the rest was water. Then one year the government decided to dig sand out of Lake Michigan to create the entire beach. It's like that. Of course, there's also parking for about a billion bikes and a three lane biking highway.

After the hard work of looking at a beach we had to take a break to sip some tea and coffee. All my family members are amazing hosts/hostesses so this week we've always had a full cup and a fuller belly.  They even served us delicious smoked horse lunchmeat.
Klaas was nice enough to drive us around all afternoon to see the Medenblik and Heerhugowaard areas. We stopped by a different type of windmill and met a goat named Arthur who cheerfully mows the lawn.

Then we went to the cute downtown part of Medenblik since it was clearly coffee time. In town everybody and their brother owns a sailboat and a bicycle. About once a minute the drawbridge would go up for a sailboat and a bunch of bikers would stack up on both sides waiting for the bridge to lower. Just as they cleared out another sailboat would drift up to start the process again.

We found some Genever which was on our list of things to try but nobody here has ever heard of the Dutch delicacy called 'creamed herring'. We ended the night with an amazing home-cooked dutch meal.  Mmm meatballs. 

Dutch word of the day: Doe-doey which just means bye-bye but sounds goofier.