Update 12-6-16: Don’t take my word for it, check out this article on Belgian Beer. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) just granted Belgium’s beer brewing tradition Cultural Heritage Status. You can find more at NPR.org. Mmmm…beer! Having grown up during the microbrew revolution in the US that began in the 1980s and…
INSPIRED I don’t remember my maternal grandfather who was a cartographer in WWII, but am told he called me “Cutie Pie” and filled my 2 year old glutton-self with dollar-sized pancakes. While I don’t remember him, I believe I have inherited his love of maps and how they relate to the shape of the earth.…
An aspect of traveling that I enjoy is seeing another culture’s alternative solution to a problem. This was no where more apparent than the Dutch solution for around-town transportation: the Bicycle. As my daughter said, “The Dutch got it goin’ on with commuting!” Bikes were everywhere when we arrived, on every path and down…
Strolling through the red light district on a cloudy Dutch day is one of the basic characteristics of a local tourist. As I meandered down the cobble stone roads, flanked on one side by the luminescent red glow of individual rooms with barely clad women advertising their bodies, and erotic shops; and on the…
One of my former pastimes was using the Stumble Upon function on the internet whereby one can spontaneously “stumble” with one press of a button, upon a website that you would likely be interested in. I say “former” because recently my internet time is preciously hoarded for blogging time, and because the majority of…
We were introduced to mainland Europe by Donna Turner, owner of Turner Cars and Campers, a camper van brokerage service located in Utrecht, Netherlands, that assists foreigners in purchasing, registering and insuring camper vehicles. We could not have done this without her! She recommended that we stay at Batenstein campground just outside Woerden (pronounced somewhere between…
Being foodies, our family enjoys good cheeses, which is to put it mildly since we share Wallace’s (Wallace and Grommit) love of all things cheese. As it happened, we were directed to Woerden (pronounced Warden) by Donna Turner, who runs Turner Cars and Campers. The agricultural specialty of this region is dairy products and wouldn’t…