Netherlands #5of6

(Except Amsterdam and Giethoorn)

Once we stopped in Breda to get some Dutch money, and the lady at the bank said this is a good time to get money, as there are special sales in the stores today, and yes, there is a flea market today also. We looked at both, but didn’t buy at either.

Gouda has several interesting sights, including lots of cheese, a lovely city hall, and a beautiful church reflected in a canal. Near Gouda we had to wait for a lift-bridge to open and let a barge pass through, then the bridge closed. There are thousands of bridges in the Netherlands, and hundreds of them are of a special design, and are fascinating to watch.

Since it must be possible for boats to travel the canals, many of the bridges are draw bridges (called “lift bridges” in the Netherlands), that can be raised to permit the passage of boats and barges. They have huge beams parallel to the road surface, high above the bridge. This beam extends beyond the actual “shore” of the canal, and with the help of a counterweight, the mechanism pulls down on the end of the beam, to facilitate raising the bridge for boats to pass. At night, many are trimmed with lights. Now that doesn’t even begin to describe these fascinating bridges, please visit the Open Air Museum in Arnhem, or see Vincent van Gogh’s, “Langlois Bridge.” This bridge was in Southern France, but it looks much the same as bridges in the Netherlands.

In the town of Enschede we asked a bicyclist for directions. He warned us to be sure to lock the RV, as “… people steal, all over the world it’s like that.”

Hundreds of large trees are planted along the freeways, many places, for many miles. Even though they must pump water back into the ocean in order to keep the land from flooding, their freeway interchanges are wide and sweeping. It was surprising that in a country with so little land to spare, they have very wide freeways, and curvy on/off ramps.

As soon as we crossed the border into Holland from Germany, there was an change in the look of the houses. Here, they are of a dark brick, with large picture windows in the living room, different from Germany. They are mostly the same style, perhaps the towns would look better if they mixed it up a little, and the homes were not so much the same.