Even though we were there in the dead of winter, the transportation of choice is very often the bicycle. Holland is flat and very bike friendly.
This is just outside the main train station at The Hague. This is the local commuter parking lot for people who come down from or commute up to Amsterdam or come in from smaller communities to work at The Hague.
This is one of the utility vehicles. Imagine your pickup truck getting this kind of gas mileage! This bike was parked along a canal in Delft.
The convention organizers had a tour set up for the advisors. This is where great cheese starts. Cows. The farm we visited was VERY clean and these yearling calves were separated from the production cows. Pregnant cows were in another area.
This is the next step on the way to cheese. The lady on the right is wife of the farmer. She, the three daughters and the farmer are the entire work force. They make all the cheese right here on the farm. They sell some of it direct to customers who will drive out weekly for their "fix" of farm fresh cheese..
This is where they age the cheeses. A specialty of the farm is the heart shaped cheese. It doesn't taste any different, they just have some antique wooden cheese molds. The large rounds in the background are very popular with cheese stores. Most cheese makers won't handle the large sizes. They get too heavy to move around and you HAVE to use wooden molds. The lighter, plastic ones are too flimsy.
The second stop on the tour was to this windmill. It is a complete reconstruction of a sawmill. They still actually saw wood here. Since Holland doesn't have the flowing water for a waterwheel, their grain grinding and sawing were set up at windmills.
Our convention ID's were good for the streetcars over about 1/3 of the country. We didn't go that far, but we went out to Delft. This is the home of the fine Dutch china. It is also the home of van Leeuwenhoek (inventor of the microscope). This is one of the churches in the town. Yes, it IS leaning over. They didn't even try to build it straight. Apparently, when they were building, the foundation sank and they just kept going. It hasn't fallen over, yet.
One of the things we were looking for in Holland was chime and handbell music. There is a small chimes choir here in Karachi which Alonda is working with. Holland has no music for chimes or handbells even though they have actual church carrillons in several of the towers. We heard this one in Delft and there is one close to the hotel we stayed in at The Hague.
This is a demonstration board showing the stages of manufacture of Delft pottery. We did the factory tour (we were the only people there) and Alonda bought a candy dish and a wall tile.
This is one of the last places we went. The Hague, like everything in Holland, is very close to the beach. Even in the winter, the beach is pretty. We would like to visit it when the weather is warmer, but it would probably be pretty crowded.
Here is our final "find" in Holland: Stroopwafels! We called them "stroopy waffels" since we weren't sure of the pronunciation. They are small waffels with vanilla syrup in them. Delicious!
We will be going back to Boston in about a year for the Model UN at Harvard University. They moved their calendar and Boston and The Hague are now both at the end of January. We decided to go to Boston!
