TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

This little travel story never made it to my blog in 2009. I’m not really sure why. I can only suspect that I had other fascinating travel stories to tell and better pictures to share (these were only taken by a mobile phone). Preserved in time: Graft-de Rijp village in the North Holland province. Several years ago I dragged the poor unwilling Dutchman with me to boring (according to him) little Dutch villages in the weekends. I can now see that he compromised a lot back then, haha. I normally pick the village of choice for the weekend and we would drive there and then we take a walk in and around the village. Luckily, Dutchman loves to walk. We normally close the afternoon with drinks and a little snack in a café restaurant in the village. I don’t have the ‘village’ bug anymore but when its beautiful weather and if I am in the mood I would love to visit a picturesque Dutch village. Nevertheless, the village in concern for this entry is ‘Graft-De Rijp’. Now I have read th...

There are not many people, even in the Netherlands, who knew that Beemster is a UNESCO World Heritage. Most would identify Beemster with the cheese manufacturer or brand as seen regularly advertised on Dutch TV. My search for cheese farms in the Netherlands led me to read about Beemster and its remarkable history. “De Beemster” is actually a river in the North Holland province, about half an hour drive from Amsterdam to the north, if without traffic which is impossible. In the course of time, this river became a huge inland sea. Because of its close proximity to the bigger sea (the Zuiderzee that does not anymore exist today) local government officials in the area had to make radical decisions to save their little towns. Polder-ization was introduced (not really sure if this term exists, lol, but Polder does). Driving to the direction of Graft De Rijp we saw this field of red and yellow flowers in the Beemster polder. Imagine, this used to be a sea. Another flower field...