Hello my friends. The end of school is rapidly approaching for you and I bet you are full of summer plans. I hope you have an amazing summer with many adventures. Don’t get too bitten by bugs!

It is cloudy and rainy here in the Netherlands. I just went out for a quick bike ride in between rain showers. Since I last wrote I have mostly stayed in Delft but I have been to The Hague and Amsterdam…both cities with canals, old buildings, museums, and lots of people watching. Tomorrow Harlan and I go to Rotterdam, a very modern city just 14 kilometers away for the big conference Harlan has been working on. We will stay in a hotel in the center of the city. I think there will be many adventures for me in Rotterdam since we will be there a week.

There is a lot of wildlife around my trailer. We are in a quiet corner of the campground and so many creatures like to visit us. I haven’t been able to get pictures of most of them because they run away, but this pheasant is quite use to people. He has a roosting spot in back of our home…..he squawks a lot. The doves coo constantly and we can hear the pitter-pattering of their feet as they run across our roof. Sometimes we hear a cuckoo bird….cuckoo-cuckoo, it sings, sometimes all night long! There are bunnies playing in our yard, a mother, father, and two adorable babies.


Plus I saw a hedgehog. Here is the picture I tried to take but it was scurrying away!












I haven’t really talked about the food in the Netherlands. Some I haven’t tried, but will…like raw herring with raw onions….although I don’t really like raw fish very much. The Indonesian food is fabulous…Indonesia used to be a colony of the Netherlands, so Indonesian food is very popular. I especially like anything with peanut sauce!

Licorice is very, very, popular here. There are so many kinds! Harlan and I like black licorice a lot however we haven’t really found a kind here that we like. One kind is called Salmiak. We took a bite of it and spit it out!!!! It is very, very salty. It is a taste that many Dutch love but, I think you have to get use to it. Not my favorite. Even the sweet licorice is a bit salty to our taste buds.... perhaps we will still find one kind to love…we have only tasted about 20!

However there are three sweet treats that I am enjoying! The Dutch have some different toppings for their breads than I see in the States. Do you know what jimmies are? They are often sprinkled on ice cream. The Dutch sprinkle them on bread spread with butter. Not just chocolate ones but fruit and anise flavored too. I like the anise flavored sprinkles but my favorite thing to do is to butter a rusk biscuit( hard toasted bread) and sprinkle gestampte muisjes on it. It is powered sugar flavored with anise. This is what I often have with my afternoon tea.




A stroopwafel is a unique type of cookie that is sold everywhere here and at stalls in the markets. They are made with two thin waffle-type wafers that have a very special caramel filling. These are especially good warm. You can buy them in stores and lay one over the top of your coffee mug to warm it up. Delicious!


The third sweet I like you can buy in the market. These are poffertjes which are very small pancakes served warm with lots of powdered sugar sprinkled on top. I seem to have a sweet tooth here!

We leave the Netherlands on July 3rd and then will be flying to Newfoundland in Canada where Harlan will attend a conference. Then home to Maine on the 10th of July! It will be good to get home but I will miss the traveling. I will probably write one or two more posts to this blog but until then, happy summer days! Love, Ms. Simon