Visit to Muiderslot Castle

Last Sunday, Dennis and I rode our town-bikes over to Muiderslot Castle. It's about a 20 minute ride, so it's pretty close. The castle is located in the town of Muiden, where the rver Vecht meets the big lake. You may remember from earlier blogs that the big lake used to be the Zuiderzee, in other words, part of the ocean. The Dutch were going crazy fighting the high tides, so they built a huge dam across the opening of the Zuiderzee. The sea became a lake and over time the water even became fresh. So, back when this castle was built, it was in a pretty strategic location to keep invaders from entering the country by going down the river. After the dam was built, the castle was no longer needed. But it's still pretty cool to see the old castle and the scenic river Vecht.

We took the guided tour of the castle even though we were told the tour would be in Dutch. The advantage of the tour is that you get to see some of the rooms that are otherwise off-limits. Fortunatley for us, the tour guide had English translation cards for us. So we could read along as he talked in Dutch. We are working really hard to learn Dutch, but we are far from being fluent! One of the highlights of the tour for us was an old painting featuring the local celebrities. One of them was Roemer Visscher. So, now we know who our street was named after.

Other than the trip to the castle, we've just been doing the normal workaday thing. I had to travel last week to Switzerland for a couple days and it always seems to take a while to catch up from that sort of thing. Between packing, unpacking, doing laundry, and going grocery shopping, you can really get lost in the day to day activities. We did manage to get out for a nice bike ride yesterday when the sun was shining. It was about 50 degrees and sunny which was good enough for a 20 mile ride. I really love riding along the farms and seeing the cows, sheep, goats, and horses.

The final bit of big news is that I got my Dutch driver's licence this week. It's been in the works for several weeks now and I'm glad it's done. It's always strange to learn the rules of a different country. To get the Dutch licence, I had to fill out a medical questionaire. To get the questionaire, you have to go to the town hall and pay 20 euros for it. Then, you mail it to the bureau and wait for them to send you a letter saying you are medically fit to drive. Once I got the letter back, I took it along with several other documents back to the town hall. Again, I had to pay some money. At this point, they took my US licence from me. The town hall guy was very helpful and gave me copies of all the application forms in case I got stopped by the police while I was waiting for my official licence to arrive. It took about 2 weeks to get a letter stating that my licence was ready to be picked up at the town hall. Since the town hall is only open from 8:30 until noon, it took me another week to schedule a time to go get it. So, all in all, it took three trips to the town hall during working hours and about 6 weeks to get my licence. Phew! Now, I just need to figure out how to get my US licence back!

Now that I have my official licence, I am hoping to do more road trips. The car is getting lonely in the driveway because the weather has been pretty nice lately!