This was our first time staying with family and a great relief to kick off our shoes, relax and reflect on our travels so far. Netherlands is famous for many things, including cheese, water and windmills and we were able to experience all of this and more.

We had the luxury of turning off our brains and being driven around. What fascinated us the most was the never ending flatness of the landscape, and the way that there were canals, streams and rivers everywhere. The Dutch have truly conquered water, and it flows when and where they want... why let something like gravity stand in your way? The greatest example we saw was the fascinating Afsluitdijk where they literally built a 32km wall/road to claim an enormous area from the sea.

Our journey of discovery included homemade Dutch pancakes, kayaking along the Utrecht canals, farmers golf (see photos...), investigating the mechanisms of windmills, clog making and eating out of the quirky Febo 'hole in the wall'. Imagine a huge selection of deep fried delights all lined up just waiting for you on display in a wall long oven style vending machine. Each snack is screaming 'pick me pick me' and begging you to insert your coins and free them from their confining oven warmer. (Note: enjoy in moderation...). On a more cultural note we were fortunate enough to visit the newly renovated Rijks Museum and behold the infamous Night Watch.

We managed to cover a fair bit of the country during our travels in the Netherlands, up to Schagen, down to Maastricht and across to Cadzand for a spot of camping. To top it all off we popped into Belgium for a visit to the beautiful city of Bruges.

We had such a great time visiting and meeting our family in the Netherlands and it is nice to get a glimpse into the family origins. We hope to see everyone again sometime soon and will try to work on our Dutch pronunciation before we visit again... luckily we didn't need to ask for directions to Schagen this time ;)