Sunday was a rather lazy day. In the morning both of us were doing things
on our computers and then around 2:30 we headed out to go visit our friends in
Belgium.
The 'Dakar Pre-Prologue' exhibition for the Dakar Rally was going on in nearby Valkenswaard, NL
Free and Esther have always been so nice inviting us for
dinner on each of my three trips to Holland. The first time we met them their
son Jan was around 14 days old. This time he was 5, and had a younger brother
Tehl who was 15 months.
When we first arrived around 3:30 Jan was gone with a
friend. They had gone to see Sinterklaas (Santa Clause) enter the country. In
Holland and Belgium their Santa comes from Spain on a ship. On December 6th
he visits the homes and leaves candy, maybe small gifts if the kids are good,
and coal and sticks if the kids are bad. Their Santa is accompanied by his helper
Zwarte Piet (black Pete), who helps him deliver the goods. In recent years the
American Santa has also made his way over here, bringing gifts on Christmas.
We had a nice time visiting, and dinner was good as usual.
Jan wanted me to play toys with him, which is somewhat of a challenge as he
doesn’t speak English, and my Dutch is pretty limited. We still managed to have
fun though and he wanted me to come help tuck him into bed.
Jan
Free, Tehl, Jan, and Esther
While Ester tucked Tehl into his bed, I tucked in Jan in his
room. Jan was trying to tell me something in Dutch but I couldn’t understand
him. So I told him “Sorry, Ik begrijpen niet, Ik spreek geen Nederlands.” Which
means “Sorry, Ido not understand, I do not speakDutch,”
he looked at me with a confused look and said “Nee?” I guess there is something
funny about telling him in Dutch that I don’t speak Dutch. Plus I had spoken a
few things now and then to him in Dutch. I guess I should have told him that I
speak a little Dutch and not so well, but the amount of Dutch I know is
probably better summed up as just not knowing.
We really enjoyed our time, but as 10 PM approached we
figured we should get on our way. When we got home we found that the road right
in front of our Hotel was closed. We knew there was something called “Glow”
going on, but we didn’t know what it was.
We decided to walk out in front of the Hotel to see what was
going on. From our apartment window we can see something being projected onto
the De Lage Landen building, but there were also things set in the middle of
the street. We decided to go check out the double-steeple church (St.
Cathrines) as we have seen light shows projected there before, and we ended up
walking around town to see what else there was around before getting to cold
and heading back to the apartment.
These are cutouts with animated picture projected onto them. This was in front of the Pullman Hotel.
Looking down the Stratumseind, there were tons of disco balls and strobe lights.
St. Cathrines Cathedral
This was a large 3D face on the side of the building. The faces kept changing.
Seen from our Apartment Window
And the coolest part of the light show, here is video of what was being projected onto St. Cathrine's Cathedral.
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Sunday: Nate and Dave got up early to go watch the race cars leave and Kristie went to the Cathedral just outside our apartment. She was hoping to hear some cool music and to see the inside of the church. We finally managed to get going in search of Palace Het Loo, but it was already lunch time. I knew from my research that there was a restaurant at the palace, but we figured the prices would be rather high so we went into the town of Apeldoorn in search of some quick food. The sign along the road is a sad face because there is 5 more km of road construction. As you get closer to the end the face becomes a full smile. This particular sign someone had drawn a mustache on. After parking we discovered that there was a big beer festival going on in the city center. There were a few food stands though, one with pulled pork sandwiches which turned out to be pretty good. At that point it was 2 PM, and the palace was only open till 5 PM, so we hurried along our way. We ...
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