If you are into surfing, not the web kind, there are some reasonably good waves which had a few people riding on, I haven’t seen anyone windsurfing there yet but looks pretty good conditions for it, how I am now thinking back to being in Lancelin and wishing i had learned to windsurf… long story cut short, one of the best places in the world to windsurf, but it was too windy for me to learn. There were a few people testing their kites for kiteboarding/kitesurfing which judging by the waves would have been awesome.

I never set foot unto the peir, it didn’t look particularly that interesting, apart from you can bungy jump off the top. A pretty small bungy jump too compared to my AJ Hacket bungy, but it would have been fun i’m sure. I tried to get Dorota to do a tandem one with me, but she wasn’t feeling the excitement.

If i had gone here a couple of hundred years ago, in fact in 1654, i would have probably been killed. As the Battle of Scheveningen was fought here between the English and the Dutch. The amusing thing is that in Britain anyone not in the actual battle would have ran off, but in the Netherlands the dutch stood on the beach to watch! I was curious as to which side won, and to my estonishment from reading the wiki both sides did

“Oddly both sides claimed a victory: the English because of their tactical superiority, the Dutch because the strategic goal of their attack, the lifting of the blockade, had been achieved”

Whilst on the wiki i noticed this interesting piece of trivia:

“There is anecdotal evidence of the name Scheveningen being used shibboleth during WWII to identify German spies: they would pronounce the initial “Sch” differently from Dutch native speakers”

There is an amazing hotel in Scheveningen called the Kurhaus Scheveningen, it was built by ze germans in 1884, and has recently been completely renovated and now is a high class hotel and casino.

So to sum it up, if you’re ever near Amsterdam it is most definitely worth a drive to the beach here, it’s about a 45 minute drive away and so worth it for a nice chilled relaxing day, and dare I say it… almost as nice as Brighton

Kinderdijk is situated in a polder (The Dutch term for land which has been reclaimed from the sea, lakes, or river deltas. The land is bounded by a dike, is drained, and is maintained by pumping.) at the the Lek and Noord rivers.

The Alblasserwaard polders are situated below sea level so these windmills were built to drain the excess water, this water is sluiced into the river Lek. These mills are the biggest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.

These dutch windmills are possibly the best known tourist site within the Netherlands are were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1997.

It was really interesting to have a look around the inside of one of these old windmills, they are much bigger inside than they appear. However I’m pretty sure they didn’t have plasma screens in back in the 16th Century. We had a little boat ride up the polder to look at the windmills… they were great but once you’ve seen one windmill you’ve seen them all.

“First and foremost, World Press Photo is known for organizing the world’s largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. Prizewinning photographs are assembled into a traveling exhibition that is visited by over two million people in some 45 countries worldwide. A yearbook presenting all prizewinning entries is published annually in six languages.”

Oude Kerk means old church, it’s the oldest church in Amsterdam. Obviously quite a creative name

The exhibition was great, what was even better was to see photos which weren’t perfect, but were technically bad, but showing meaning and making you think about the situation.

Photo of the Oude Kerk by devo_andare