Change of country, change of temperature - Viva L'Espana

We left the Netherlands where it was drizzling slightly and the estimated temperature was 18 degrees.  In Madrid it was 36 degrees.  A slight contrast!

Last glimpse of The Netherlands - at Schiphol Airport - a desk where people can plug their computers in and cycle at the same time.  A neat idea that should be adopted more widely.

I mentioned the heat already.  The terrain is SUCH a contrast to green Netherlands.  Here the countryside looks parched and very much like the landscape in California and also in Mexico.

We jumped into our hire car and set off 40kms to the north of Madrid.  In the Netherlands, Sieska clocked up just over 1800 kms driving us up and down the country and largely visiting relatives.  We have yet to see how many kms we will drive in Spain over the three weeks we will spend here.

Our first Spanish castle, very near the posada where we booked in for our first night. We have just repacked the suitcases putting the coolest clothing on top and leaving the warmer garments in the car.

Manzanares el Real was our first port of call and where we spent our first night.   This is in the Parque Guadarrama.  The place was recommend to Andrew by someone in the Canberra Bushwalking Club.  We took the free bus to the mountain somewhere near the top where there were many walks and also many walkers.

The rock formations are lovely.

Boating on the canal

The power of who you know!  Sieska's friend and former colleague Lucy and her husband Henk, live at a lovely house on a canal nearby.  We went there for afternoon tea and Henk took us for a boat trip around their area of the canal.  It was a delightful way to bring to a close this trip to The Netherlands.

Here we are setting off. .

This is Henk and Luncy's house.  It has a most beautiful and peaceful outlook.  The lily pads on the water's surface provide a wonderful background to this wonderfully situated home.

A view of a less inhabited part of the canal.

Samples of some of the houses along the canal.

A rest on the terrace at the end of our boat trip.







We have enjoyed wonderful hospitality at every moment of the trip.  Everyone has welcomed us and been generous and kind.  It was great to catch up with almost all of Andrew's cousins.  Their closeness is especially poignant, considering the history of the parents' separation earlier in life.  If there is a heaven, I am sure the parents look down happily at their offspring.

We will end our trip to The Netherlands with two photos of food.

This is a national Dutch dish of boerkool (kale) and mashed potato with a rookworst.  On this particular occasion, it was a takeaway dish from the supermarket.  I have commented previously that there is a far larger selection of tasty looking prepared food in The Netherlands than we have in Australia,

This is a photo of the long awaited but disappointing, tuna lasagne.  It too came prepared at the local fish shop.  I will however make it myself and I will have a lot more tuna in it than the fish shop provided.  The concept is worth imitating but this dish was not up to expectations.  By far the nicest dish on this trip so far was the Finnish salmon soup which was served by FinAir and which I then googled and cooked.  When I googled it the name given was Lohikeitto.  Delicious and highly recommended.  And easy to prepare.

Visit to the last relatives and to a castle

The drive to just beyond Groningen in the north of The Netherlands was our last stop to visit Andrew's relatives.  On the way, we stopped at Wapserveen, where the grandson of Klaas  lives with his parents on a beef cattle farm.  Only Nick was able to meet us as his parents, Angelique and Jan, are away in Sweden.

The farm house they live in but rent used kit materials from Germany and was erected in two weeks.  It is a handsome, sturdy wooden dwelling.

The extensive interior is a very rustic Scandinavian look.  It is a very interesting structure.

Nick is a well-travelled young man of 21.  He is very keen to visit us in Australia when time within his study commitments allow.






We then drove on to the castle at Fraeylemborg at Slochteren to meet up with Nick's grandparents.  Klaas is one of Andrew's cousins on his father's side, and he and his wife Hilda had us staying at their farm near Groningen on our last visit and we had our famous smoked eel party.  That wonderfully tasty meal had made a deep and lasting impression on all of us, including the third cousin Sieska. 

Unfortunately, this week Klaas is very involved with his work at the castle so we could not repeat that experience😊. Klaas is in charge of the general land management at the castle and this week there is a special festival on which involved him.   We had to meet there for lunch only.  We had visited the castle with Klaas and Hilda on our previous visit but it was good to see it again and to see the exhibits I mention below.

Fraeylemaborg Castle dates back more than seven centuries.  It received its current appearance at the end of the eighteenth century but it was built in the middle ages as a 'stone house' defensive dwelling and it grew into an impressive building housing influential residents.  The castle is located on an estate of more than 23 acres. 

It is now a museum and the rooms and furnishings reflect the character of the age in which the house was last privately occupied.

For the festival, Klaas had prepared an interesting "barefoot path" 3km long through the woods with lots of entertainment along the way.  Here are a couple musical instruments he had fashioned.

Madurodam at The Hague

Madurodam is a miniature park and tourist attraction in the Scheveningen district of The Hague. It is home to a range of 1:25 scale model replicas of famous Dutch landmarks and historical sites. It was opened in 1952 and it has been visited by tens of millions of visitors. The money collected goes to various Dutch charities.

The park was named after a war hero, George Maduro, a Jewish law student who fought in WWII and also for the Dutch Resistance. He died in Dachau concentration camp at the age of 28 in 1945, 11 weeks before the camp was liberated. He was posthumously awarded the highest and oldest medal in The Netherlands for his valor.

The park is a fabulous experience. One need not travel to all parts of The Netherlands to appreciate all the marvelous buildings displayed here in miniature. Here are some of the buildings. Whereas I am not sure what and where all of them are, I have labelled as many as I could.

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Het Loo Palace is a palace in Apeldoorn, built by the House of Orange-Nassau. The symmetrical Dutch Baroque building was built between 1684 and 1686 for William III and Mary II of England.  The garden was designed by Claude Desgotz.  The building was renovated between 1976 and 1982 and is now a state museum.

The famous Kaaswaag or Cheese Market in Alkmaar.  The market originally provided shelter for poor travellers.  It was then converted to a weighing house in 1582 and it now houses the Dutch Cheese Museum.  Viewing it brings back pleasant memories of our visit to it five years ago.

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  This 1885 building houses one of the largest and most important paintings from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.

A modern building, a rarity in this park but it provides a nice contrast to the other lovely histroical buildings.

Panorama Mesdag at the Hague

This circular painting of the town of Scheveningen as it was in 1880 consists of 8 panels each 35m in height and the whole panorama measuring 120m.  It was painted under the supervision of the Dutch painter Henrik Willem Mesdag and four other painters including his wife.  The panorama was completed in four months 1881.

It is the largest painting in The Netherlands and the only one to have a museum specially built for it's display.  Other panoramas were painted in the nineteenth century but the Panorama Mesdag is the oldest in the world and which is still displayed in it's original setting.

I can of course only show the columns in a linear fashion here on the page but standing there surrounded by the paintings on all sides is a great experience.

Panorama Guth was painted along the lines of Panorama Mesdag in Alice Springs by two Dutch painters.  Started in 1971 as a realistic Central Australian outback scene, it was completed in 1975.  This Australian panorama was painted on 33 pieces of canvas, each six metres high and arranged as a continuous circle of 20 metres in diameter with a central viewing platform in the middle.
Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 2005.  Andrew had been there and saw the panorama at Alice.  He can now compare the two.

Here are two of the panels of the Panorama Mesdag in a closer view.

I have just been told the story of Scheveningen by a friend back in Australia that I had not heard.  Because it is so devilish to pronounce, during the WWII, the Germans got anyone they suspected of only pretending to be Dutch to pronounce the name of this town as only a born and bred Dutch person could do it properly by getting their tongue around it.  This of course applies to many Dutch words, giving substance tothe rumour that Dutch is not a language but rather, a throat disease.

Sightseeing in The Hague

We took the train to The Hague and spent the day exploring this lovely, gracious city.  The buildings are beautiful and very well kept.  Being a European city it reminded me so much of my own home city of Budapest.  But The Hague has a great deal of history and it is of course the bureaucratic centre of The Netherlands.  And also it is the home of the King's Palace, where the King conducts his business.

I cannot resist taking photo after photo of buildings which are my passion.  I am going to be doing a separate post on the Maduradam which is a tremendously popular tourist attraction and the worlds' happiest war memorial, dedicated to the memory of George Madur who lost his life at the end of WWII and who was given the highest war medal for valour in The Netherlands by Queen Wilhelmina after his death.  It is a wonderful collection on miniatures of the most famous Dutch buildings around the country.

These photos are of buildings around The Hague.

The Ridderzaal or the Knights" Hall. It is the main building of the 13th century Binnenhof, a complex of buildings and the centre of Dutch government for centuries.  It is used for the state opening of Parliament.

The king's Palace.  Because the flag is raised, the King is in residence.

A cafe along a canal - a frequent Dutch sight.

We are having a relaxing cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe ourselves.

A young pianist making use of the piano at the Central Railway Station.