When my parents were visiting us here in Illinois last week, we had made some spinach-artichoke dip and were about to put the leftovers in the fridge when my mom told me that you can never ever keep spinach leftovers as reheating spinach is dangerous and causes cancer. I vaguely remembered something about this from my Dutch youth, but my American wife and her parents had never heard of such a thing. To be safe we threw the spinach away, but it did make me curious. More »

Here is a list of my five favorite birdwatching places in the Netherlands and some of my favorite photos of birds that we’ve seen. My top 5 birding locations are:

1. Lepelaarplassen, Flevoland
2. De Muy & De Petten on Texel, Noord Holland
3. Starrevaart in Leidschendam, Zuid Holland
4. Zuidpier in IJmuiden, Zuid Holland
5. De Putten, Noord Holland

Common Kingfisher near De Lepelaarshut

Five years ago, on 22 August 2003, we went up in a hot air balloon at the Breda Balloon Fiësta. Here are some pictures from our ride:

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After our visit to Space Expo today we also stopped by the European Sand Sculptures Festival on the boulevard in Noordwijk to see the sand sculptures. This year’s theme is In Celebration of Disney and there were eight sand sculptures based on Disney animated feature films. Some were better than others. WALL-E, Sleeping Beauty and Narnia were by far the nicest, and they were also awarded with 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Here are some pictures:

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Today we went to Noordwijk and visited the Space Expo exhibition and visitor center of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC). The European Space Agency has sites in several European countries. ESTEC is the largest site and the technical heart of ESA. More than 2,000 rocket scientists work here on dozens of space projects. Here’s a view of ESTEC in Noordwijk, with the dunes and North Sea in the background. You can see that the scientists have their own golf course and soccer field. The building at the bottom, to the right of the soccer field, is Space Expo:

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Today we saw the magnificent Cunard cruise ship the Queen Elisabeth 2 in Rotterdam. We spotted the large red word “Cunard” by chance between a few buildings as we drove home from our dentist appointment, so we had to go check it out. We crossed the Erasmusbrug and drove passed the Cruise Terminal where all the fancy people with their pipes and hats were getting ashore and onto busses. Unfortunately we didn’t have our camera with us, but here are some great pictures from today as found on Flickr by aureliozen and vanda2006:

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Last Wednesday we went to Texel for the second time (last time was in April last year). We took the train from Leiden to Den Helder and then the 9:30 Teso ferry to Het Horntje on Texel. It was a beautiful day for bicycling around Texel: 30^oC and sunny.

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The Euro 2008 football (soccer) championships begin next week in Austria and Switzerland. Dutch grocery chain Albert Heijn is trying to duplicate the huge success of their Wuppie campaign of two years ago with a new cute character to collect – the Welpie. Welpies are cute little wild-haired lions meant to show support for the Dutch team. Welp is Dutch for baby lion.

We got our first Welpie on Monday and today I picked up another.

Our Welpies

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Yesterday we saw a Big Boy statue in Kaatsheuvel. Instead of holding a plate with a burger, he’s got a giant Coca-Cola strapped on.

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When Ireland banned smoking in all enclosed public spaces in March 2004 it made big news. Critics said that pubs and restaurants would suffer, but the ban has actually been a huge success. Cigarettes sales in pubs dropped by as much as 60%, thousands of smokers quit in the first year and more non-smokers ventured out to the pub. Since Ireland’s success story most other European countries have adopted anti-smoking laws. More »