Homeland: The Netherlands

We enjoyed ourselves so much on our last visit to the Netherlands that we thought we would make time in our trip to return and do it again!

It is great meeting family that you've never met before! Here are some pictures:

This is Aunt Corine! We spent a day with her eating and drinking and seeing some small Dutch towns, as well as the largest section of reclaimed land in the Netherlands.

We had a dinner party last night! Mark and Margriet hosted and cooked a great meal. This is Leon (Husband of Monique; son-in-law of Rita) and Aunt Rita:
Here we have Mark on the right (son of Rita), Monique in the center (daughter of Rita), and Margriet on the left (Girlfriend of Mark):
Cleaning up after dinner:
Rita on the phone with Dad in Canada:

We've been having a great time checking out Holland. Two days ago, Margriet and Rita took us to The Waterland Neeltje Jans complex. It is a museum and park devoted to the massive dam project in south-western Holland. The dam is 3.2km long and consists of 62 huge moving doors to protect the low-lying sections of the Netherlands from flooding during bad weather and high tides. Very impressive!

Yesterday, Corine took us to see a poldar. A poldar is a large section of reclaimed land. We drove along a huge dike, on one side there was water, on the other was the reclaimed land. The water level was significantly higher than the level of the land on the other side of the road. Very cool to see.