The bike ride

Simone and I went for a bike ride this evening. The weather was really nice.

The ride mainly went through fields, some with cows :-)

The sun had 2 sun dogs or parhelia.

Us :-)

We had a chat with a group of cows.

The half-way point of our trip was a little town called Ilpendam.

Windmill.

The ride was lovely and I think we'll do it again.

The animals

Simone and I went for a nice walk tonight. We discovered that the bridge that they put in about 2 years ago is now finally in use!

There were insects like this wonderful bumble bee.

And cute little bunnies.

And also some goats. Most of them were hiding in the high grass though ;-)

The zoo

Today we went to the zoo called "Hoenderdaell" which is close to Den Helder, an hours drive up North from us. I'd never been there and it's not an area where one would expect a zoo because it's mostly flat grass. The only animals we see in this area usually are cows...

So here are some photos of a lovely day in the zoo:

These guys went out on an adventure by themselves but got caught... Now they were being directed towards their habitat...

Their other friends were already waiting for them to return ;-)

The Makis were the best attraction. We went to them during feeding time twice. Some of them had little baby makis with them.

During feeding they like to see from above to look for food. I was a perfect lookout point for them ;-)

And when they see food they are gone, jumping from shoulder to shoulder.

The zoo is also a sanctuary for lots of animals like the bears from a few photos back but also for lions, tigers and panthers. The zoo buys them from circusses that do now want them anymore. Great cause I think.

When we got home I had a not so fun job to do: photographing the damage that was caused by someone opening the door when we were passing looking for a park at the zoo.

There's damage on the window rubber from the mirror being squashed against it.

Damage on the mirror's base.

The worst part is that the folding mechanism now folds in the mirror too much, hitting the already damaged rubber every time.

This is how the damaged mirror folds in...

This is how the other one folds in which is how it should.

Texel, day 2

On this second day of our little Texel visit we started off at the lighthouse. The weather was nice but it was very windy and chilly.

The sun offered some nice photo-ops.

This time we went inside the lighthouse which has about 7 floors. I believe this old toilet is on the 3rd of 5th floor.

At the end of the second world war the tower was badly damaged and they built a new outer wall around it. On the 4th floor you can walk in between the old outside and the new outside wall and you can see where the shells and bullets hit.

The control room is not in very much use anymore I think...

The lighthouse has a website: www.vuurtorentexel.nl/.

The beach at the lighthouse is also very wide. You wouldn't believe howmany ships sunk in these waters.

Driving down the island I wanted to make a stop at this windmill just to take a photo. Frankly I thought it would be a bit more interesting but this is it...

Then we drove to a sheep farm. There re lot of little lambs there around this time of year.

One sheep had just delivered two babies.

This one was trying to walk for the first time.

Trying to find milk.

But because mama sheep's milk factory wasn't up to speed yet, the lambs got fed from the bottle.

This mama sheep was resting with its babies.

Every farm has chickens.

More sheep.

Outside of the farm the view was lovely.

Especially when looking towards me of course ;-)

They really love building sheds like this. I quite like them.

The farmer was putting on a demonstration of sheep-herding with his dogs; 3 Australian Kelpies.

Introducing some of his sheep.

Fun with hay.

After the sheep we drove to an old fortress without having any idea what to expect which was good coz there wasn't much to see.

But, Napoleon did come to inspect his troops here once.

Driving a bit further we spotted these fields of tulips.

We drove down and walked through all of them to make nice pictures.

There was also a little field where you could pick your own flowers for 15 cents per flower. We picked 30 very nice ones :-)

When we were about done we drove back to the ferry and just missed it which meant we had to wait for an hour. We were the first ones though, woohoo! :-)

We had dinner in Den Helder at some Italian resto. It was VERY nice but portions were HUGE. I was unable to finish this Calzone...

Driving home through shower after shower. We had a very ncie 2 days out and about. Next time a bit less wind please!