Maassluis....Salute

Hmmm, What time is it?

Just take a closer look and see..

It's 1 hour after Hoog Water= High Tide.

Also note, it's close to Spring Tide.

Yep it's a High Tide-Low Tide clock.

Apparently invented in and for the Port of Maassluis. 

Maassluis has a long history for being home-port for (ocean going) tugboats.

Now it's more or less a museum port. 

See here two residents. The most famous is the FURIE. http://english.furie.nl/

Holland's oldest sea going steam tug boat...almost 100 years old now.

 Some serious steering stuff...,

No-no, no auto-pilots like we have on Alishan and Fu Kyo.

Remember, our world travels with sy Jan Haring started more or less from Maassluis, that was in 1984.

And on paper, Maasluis is home port for  sy Alishan.

When will i see you again....

What's that song again??

Maassluis, 

Salute!

So...So...So Holland

What do you think...??

Great conditions for a bicycle ride neh.

So we did. 

There a zillion bicycles-only trails crisscross Holland...

What a pleasure to paddle...

The only hick-ups are the bike-racers....wow, they zoom around at amazing speeds and think they own the road....

You see, when it's nice weather and flowers are blooming...

....good to be there.

Somewhere in the dunes, just south of The Hague. 

We had to go to this city "to do" our new passports.

Took us 2 hours cycling to get to the office, NICE.

3 Hours waiting for our turn, Not so nice!

30 minutes to fill out the forms and pay the bills, Easy

And an other pleasant bike ride home to Maassluis, 
Sore bums by now.

Oh yes, 3 days later, we could pick-up the new documents...

(Way easier than doing this process in Japan: we would have to fly back and forth to Tokyo!!)

Time for an other stroll, this time some heather fields near Wageningen.

The local yacht harbor in Wageningen.

We had stayed here, now almost 30 years ago, with our 

 sailing yacht JAN HARING.

The River Rhine, facing upstream.

That's where we had come from (Arnhem).

This time of the year, the Rhine is so.......so....different from the seas and oceans we have seen ever since...

This location is: Hoek van Holland.

Final stretch of water what started as River Rhine....

Port of departure for us in 1984. 

With Long Time Friend, Crew and Sister 

Nettie 

in front of farmhouse:

de Vergulde Hand.

yep, it's for sale..

And read more, in dutch..

Miauw...eh... Salute

Knives and Forks

 Consuming food is an important activity while Family Bonding.

Coming from the Land of Chopsticks, Sushi, Sashimi 

and Slurping Noodles....we noticed: 

 #Food is knife and fork work, one can go fast and eat a lot.

#All food is served like Mountains...

#It all taste so good and there is some much to choose from.

See here a few pictures taken during our visit to the Low Lands.

Food on your plate Marijke: Concentration, concentration!

This was in Brussels at one of the restaurants with an outdoor terrace.

First,  the Mighty Three:

1) Hollandse Nieuwe Haring...

Wow, wake me up any time...

2) Bruintjes kaas. 

Finding good whole wheat bread in Japan is almost not possible. 

(well, for a price it is...)

Not even talking about Good Old Gouda Cheese...,

 or goat cheese, or Edammer, or....cheese,

3) Stroopwafels with a cup of Good Dutch coffee...

Never ever do you eat only 1 wafel....

And there is more...

Our favorite:

Witlof with some cheese cooked in the oven,

Stampot rauwe andijvie and verse worst.

Cheese croquet.

Sssst: Family at Work

Chicken Curry Madagascar style.

Cooked mussels Brussels' style... portion is for 1 person!

Note the always and ever supplied french (Belgium) fries...

 Hot Poffertjes with an extra portion butter.

Baked eel.

And last, something that was almost like home-sashimi-home: smoked, raw and minced salmon, some ikura and zeekraal (kind of wakame).

Yummy!

Back in Japan...we're showing food-withdrawal symptoms,

and pfff, have an amazing amount of blubber to be burned off.

Where are my running shoes...??

Salute.

We Got Hacked

Dear All,

Some of you might have received an email "from us"

 via our Hotmail account.

With No Subject.

And with only a link in the text box....

sending you to Vitamin Pills and Loose Weight websites.

And without any sign-off with our names.

Sorry.

This was the "good" work of a hacker 

( why do we think it was a male?).

Hope you didn't open the link.....

(in the past we too have seen this sort of mail coming into our inbox.....so we know the grggrgrggrrr)

The GOOD part of this all is that we did receive 

many Oh-No, You've Been Hacked mails!

Very much appreciated!!... 
Good to read you....from some of you we hadn't received mail for a long time....;-)

Anyway, hope the error got fixed now, 
i changed the Hotmail  password to ********

Salute

Family Bonding at Brussels

After Moeders funeral, it was time to do some more 

Family Bonding.

So we all jumped into 2 cars and drove the Road to Brussels.

The City that houses the EU Parliament and Sister Jacqueline.

And didn't we have luck with the weather: 2 days of 30+ C degrees & zero wind. Perfect conditions to be outside BUT you had to stay as much as possible in the shade.

No problem: Plenty of terraces.

Of course we couldn't be stopped from the odd sightseeing stroll..

 Pssst Lady, i'm taking this picture!!

Sunday 6AM.
Bro Loek and i went for a run into the City and.....were totally shocked. 

Probably due to the nice weather each and everybody had stayed up all night and had used the city as a 

Public Rubbish Field AND Outdoor Toilet...

Wow, what a mess & smell at some places.

As you know, Brussels is also home to Manneken Pis,
but are there so many of them...?

But there were Flowers to the Dark-side!!

Once a year Brussels' main plaza turns into a Flower Bed.

Good thing to be so early...we had the square almost to ourselves...
(just don't look at the rubbish...).

They luff Big and Massive Dwellings ..

 OH NO, in what room did i put my reading glasses...

An early morning veggy store is getting ready for the day.

Wow, a clean road...

Thank you Mademoiselle.

That was fun-running...going down hill, 
no traffic and so many things to look at. 

 Brussels' Palace of Justice...waking up?

Suske and Wiske, one of our favorite cartoons.

Two things Brussels is famous for..

And there he is....

and so is the Lady with the Camera...

Manneken Pis had a pet..and like him, the dog was good at...??

Indeed, so the city made a statue of him doing its bizz.

Oh yes, of course Brussels is heaven for real antique..

and junk.

Early Sunday at the Vossenmarkt.

Two wonderful days.

Thanx for showing us around Sis Jacqueline.

  Salute.

Droef and Diffcult

Droef is dutch for sad.

Difficult it is to write this post.

Moeders.

28/10/1923~10/8/2012

(picture was taken by Fujino san when Pa and Ma came to visit us in Japan, Feb 1996)

Marijke, Jacqueline, Marleen, Jaap, 

Loek, Sjaak, Hessel and Tom.

Byebye Moeders and Oma.

We'll keep the many happy memories.

Beside the sad part,

we were happy to see the family. 

Some of our cousins we hadn't seen for > 40 years.

Home Sleep Home

Guess who's happy daddy's home again...

Good Night.