I'm sitting on my flight to Newark. The plane is still boarding. Wow. What a hectic, stressful day this has been up until this point.
On my next adventure I vow to pack and plan way ahead of time.
The flight landed in Newark for the layover. Eating lunch in the food court.
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be meeting up with my friend, Josje when I land in Amsterdam. I sent her an email right before I left the for the airport..and now I emailed Glenn (my brother) from one of the internet phone things.
I log off, walk another lap or two around the food court, then sit back down at a phone/internet to see that Glenn replied..and Josje! She'll meet me at the exit to the luggage area. Horray. The last keyboard that I sat at didn't have a 'p' key. That made for an interesting email.
I slept most of the flight to Europe. I woke up for dinner, which was supposed to be low fat/calorie that I requested when I bought the ticket. Dinner consisted of boneless skinless chicken on rice, with carrots, a roll, salad and sugar free cookies. It wasn't bad.
Full from dinner, I went back to sleep.
I woke up to a huge amount of turbulance and a couple of ladies yelling out in fright when the plane unexpectantly bounced around.
Back to sleep. Woke up apparently after breakfast was served. We didn't have too much longer before we landed.
Amsterdam!! I walked and walked to the baggage on belt 17. Had to wait what seemed like forever to get my backpack.
Walked around to find the exit. Entrance and sign for duty and one for non-duty with like 5 cop looking guys standing around, under the signs. Ahhh. What to do!! Trying not to make eye contact I scurried through the non-duty doorway to a short line where I got my passport stamped with my first European stamp!
I exited another set of doors to see people lined up behind the rope, waiting for the arrivals that they're picking up. All eyes on me. There's Josje! Standing right there. Yippee. We hug, say our "hi's", then go down an escalator to board a train. Nice and comfy double decker train. No one else in our section. I'm here finally!!!
In a short time we got to our stop then walked 10 minutes or so to her apartment. Cute neighborhood. Quaint little cars, bicycles parked outside..lined up.
Josje (pictured in the photo) showed me around her place then I started doing some light arranging of my stuff. We'd be leaving this afternoon for up North to camp. Tomorrow we'll be Wadlopers as we walk across the Wadden Sea to Schiermonnikoog Island.
We bike over to the supermarket. So many people are biking..and young or old, nicely dressed or not.. Even just going to the supermarket is fun. Looking at all the different food labels all in Dutch. And the carts go sideways too, not just forwards/backwards. Ingenious. Why don't we have that!?!
Got back to Josje's place. I went online and shot a couple emails out to tell people that I made it and am okay.
A friend of Josje's is over. They're in the patio outside chatting. Starting to feel pretty drowsy. Jetlag setting in. 1PM now. Layed down for a nap.
Woke up a bit later. Josje's friend, Marika, is over now that we're going to drive with up north. We piled our gear and ourselves into her tiny European car.
Napping again. Woke up to see us puttering through small, quaint towns. Two lane roads, bicyclists.
After a couple hours total we end up in Pieterburen where we'll be camping. A few of the other ladies that we're going to Wadlopen with were already there, hanging out..their tents already set up. We're in a rural part of Pieterburen. Behind us is an open field with a house in the far distance.
We set up our tents and move our folding chairs in with the others who are gathered around the cheese, crackers, and cookies that are laid out in the ground before us. All Dutch speak english, but they revert to Dutch unless reminded otherwise. So, I sat with them as they spoke Dutch..and I quietly wrote in my journal.
Half amusing and half "sighing to myself", I thought how this is the start of my European Adventure and 1 month of not understanding people!
Another one of the ladies was a caver, too. (That is how I met Josje..through our Cleveland Grotto-cave group). So, I was consequently invited to cave with them in France. The following week they'd be staying at a castle, where the count said they could stay, and they'd cave the next day. Nice!
Feeling a bit restless I borrowed a ladies bike and went on a bike ride. It was fun. I had to have been gone for a good hour. I had stopped at a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetary (pictured on the left) where I read some of the old grave stones. A few young men from the (British?) Royal Air Force are buried here along with other military people. I also biked by a sign for the Wadlopen hike we'd be doing tomorrow morning.
When I got back everyone was kind of looking at me. I seems they were wondering if I was lost, but Josje had faith in me. hehe.
Getting dark now..more of the group showing up...additional cavers, too! A bunch of us head to bed. We'll be waking up early for the Wadlopen hike!!
Rise and shine! At 5:10AM we arose from our slumber, changed and left for the 30 minute drive to the parking lot to pick up the bus that will take us to the Wadlopen starting point.
There were a numerous people in the dark parking lot when we arrived. Apparently we were 30 minutes late. Oops. We were driven in a van to the starting point. The driver told us about the history of the huge dikes as we drove by them in the dim light of the morning. He explained how they gained new land and pointed out the dikes from the 1860's.
There must have been about 30 of us in the group being guided. It was about a 15 minute walk to the Wadden Sea. We then commenced squishing in the mud as we walked out to sea. It was a fun experience. The water was anywhere from bottom of shoe deep to waist deep. But it would be very deep for long. Only a handful of steps or so. Much of the hike had mud that your feet sunk down into. It was a nice workout.
I uploaded this short video to Youtube. I think I like this movie feature on my site. I'll probably be uploading a bunch more of various adventures!
We saw piles of mussels, long stretches of "beaches", little crabs, sea worms, and beached sail boats.
We were making pretty good time because the water was lower than normal so we took a number of breaks as we'd get to a sandbar.
As we stood watching people cross the particularly deep section we saw a glimpse or two of the head and body of a seal.
After a few(?) hours we arrived at the island. Our group split up. The bulk of the group continued on parrallel to the island and we headed straight for it. We had hiked about a dozen miles or so already up until this point. I picked up seashells along the way. Stuffing my pockets.
The part of the Schiermonnikoog Island that we were on is a nature preserve that happened to be open to the public for a short time. There were fields of wild plants (we sampled one) and what looks like sand dunes covered in grass.
We changed out of our wet clothes, and ankle hightop shoes and continued on. My ankles had chaffed horribly from my socks not being high enough and my Converse sneaker high tops digging into my ankles with every step. Talk about painful.
We ate some more wild green sprigs from the plants as we walked through the low brush/plants/flowers. Hopping over water channels. A guy was doing surveying in the distance.
We took a rest break on some sort of plant covered dune. Following Marika's que, laying on the slope I put my hood up, layed back, and fell asleep. I must have still been recuperating from the time difference.
I woke up to the one Dutch guy saying, "How do you say..wakey wakey". This whole time pretty much the talk has all been in Dutch. They seem to all pretty much know English too. Josje said they have to learn English starting in grade 7.
We continued on past big sand dunes covered with plant life. Very desolate. We came upon a sandy road. A few people were riding bikes. More walking.
Saw sliver of sea to the right and a few sailboats with white sails.
We saw a building in the distance along the shore. Looked at it through my new monocular. We wondered if it was the restaurant that we'd been thinking about. Turned out to be a lifeguard building.
Took another break at the beach. Civilization. There were lots of people sunning themselves and enjoying the water.
We soon ambled over to the restaurant and had ourselves a celebratory beer.
As we left I was astonished at the sea of parked bicycles. There must have been hundreds from all the people hanging out at the beach. Yep, this sure isn't Ohio. We ate more wild fruit that was growing along the gravel path. We happened upon an old bunker. Looked like it could have been a hobbits house.
We continued along the bicycle path. Lots of bicycle riders passed us up and clanked their bells to let us know they were going to pass us.
Veered off into the woods. Nice pines..back on gravel path..now into civilization and buildings. Bike renting place. Restaurant, bus, snack shop, bikes lined up in front.
Apparently there's not a whole lot of full time residents on this island and those who come over use the ferry and can't take vehicles so bikes abound.
We took the bus to the ferry. Seagulls flying low. Saw another seal. Head and body. Half way into this day I realized that the backup battery that I brought was one that still needed to be charged. No juice left. Big bummer. So I switched back to the one that I started originally using. Almost dead. Double bummer!
So anyways, the ferry was a 30 minute ride. We ate dinner at the restaurant right there along the water. Fish & Chips. Fried. Hmmm..so much for low carb. I've been eating a lot of bread too! Yikes.
Our table was on the restaurant patio with a nice view of the water and ferry dock.
Back at the campground I took a shower. If felt so good to be clean. I walked back to the site to find people breaking down their tents. Some of the group couldn't stay another night.
Getting dark. Glow bracelets. Marika checking for the glow under her jacket. Funny stuff. You had to be there.
As the sun went down it started getting pretty chilly in the dark. Before bed I walked over to the building, sat on one of the couches and wrote some more in my journal. It's not easy maintaining an up to date journal! And this is only day 2!
I had a good time these past couple days but I was now looking forward to returning to Amsterdam and do some exploring and checking out some museums!
Josje woke me at 9AM or so. The 5 of us remaining are going to the goat farm this morning.
The entrance fee was 5 euros! We each received white plastic coveralls and disposable booties for over our shoes. Wouldn't want to contaminate the goats, now would we.
After a little verbal run down (in dutch with Josje translating) of the facilities by a worker, we were handed some papers which would describe what we were seeing. Then we were off to check out the goats.
In the first building was a large metal vat which holds the goat milk that gets picked up twice a week. The second room has 2 rows of individual stalls for the milking with a little feed bin in the front of each to lure the goats in.
The other room had all the goats. ..This is all very exciting, I know... That was pretty much it.
Josje, Marieke and I went back to camp to break down the tents. We said our goodbyes to the other two women, Ino and Myrthe and headed back to Amsterdam.
Marieke dropped us off at Josje's place around 3PM. We unpacked, washed clothes, then biked all over town.
We went through the Red Light District, past the Old Church (Oude Kerk), Dam Square (Madame Toussaud wax museum), biked by the road where Anne Franks house is, saw the skinniest house in Amsterdam.
Getting hungry we ate in this popular restaurant district at De Blauwe Hollander. This neighborhood has alley after alley of al fresco style restaurants. It was hard to choose a restaurant. I knew I wanted to eat traditional dutch food, so we chose a good one. Afterwards we stopped off for a coffee in a coffee shop, The Dolphins. I had to see for myself what an Amsterdam coffee shop was like.
After dinner we checked out Leidseplein Square which is another popular hang out place. We stepped into the Bull Dog coffee shop, the one that tourists seem to flock to. Josje and I stepped inside, walked downstairs and watched some young guys buy weed from the guy behind the counter. Hellooo Amsterdam!
We biked back home where I stayed up until 6:30AM working on my photos, emails, and updating my website with Wadlopen pics. I sent some photos off to my family and friends.
Marta from Slovakia emailed me back regarding my letter that I "snail" mailed to about 15 potential family members back in Slovakia! I had mailed the letter a few weeks before I left for my trip. I explained in the letter how my grandmother lived in the village of Fackov until the age of 7, then she, her brother and mother boarded a ship for Ellis Island. So, I replied back to Marta that I was indeed in Europe now and I'd be contacting her in a couple weeks regarding meeting up in Slovakia. I had seen photos of the small village of my grandmothers using Google Earth and craved to see it for myself and to visit with relatives still living there. I soon would be there!
