8th Wonder of the World

I slept in on Sunday…I almost missed the last call for breakfast at the hotel. I made it down there at 10:15 and breakfast is over at 10:30. I straightened my room a bit and showered, then I figured out how to work my new power adaptor that I had picked up on Saturday.

I sat downstairs in the dining area of the hotel for a while. I’m addicted to Sudoku puzzles (Japanese logic puzzles) and I’ve been working those like crazy. I’m getting to where I can fly through the ‘light and easy’ ones finally, so I’ll get to jump up to Moderate soon. I have my strategy working in my favor now.

Nellie and Ludwig picked me up at the hotel at about 1:30pm. We headed out in the direction of the town of Veere (it’s to the north of middelburg in the map below). From there we headed to a really spectacular sight…the entire area of Zeeland flooded in 1953. The entire area is below sea level and there were large numbers of villages that were washed completely away (much like our current tsunami and hurricane disasters).

In fact, a team of engineers from here contacted the US to offer their expertise to help New Orleans repair their levee problems a few years back. We’re said to have politely declined the offer for help. The flood gates that they have built here are truly incredible. Ludwig made the comment of it being the 8th wonder of the world while we were on our way there, I bit my tongue and decided not to mention the astrodome, man was that a good decision. This puts the poor astrodome to shame (and it’s still use). These flood gates cut off the entire north sea…it’s massive and stretches between island after island. Words cannot really do it justice.

We visited a tower that is the absolute only thing remaining of an entire city. The town was never rebuilt and now it is a nature preserve that surrounds it. I believe the town was called Koudekerke, and the tower is now an information center (very tight quarters) that you can climb to the top of.

We stopped at a restaurant on the water there and had a drink and some bitterballen. It’s like the croquettes I had at lunch one day (that taste like an entire chicken fried steak with gravy wrapped into a fried package) except these were in the shape of a ball, rather than a stick.

After visiting the huge flood gates (we hopped to the two islands north of Walcheren – Noord-Beveland, and the other one just north of there) we headed back to Flissingen. We went on the boardwalk there…it’s really funny because they are building these high-rise condos on the boardwalk and it is starting to resemble South Beach Miami. We saw a beautiful sunset and had a drink at a bar on the water. They have this piece of art called the wind organ…it is a grouping of bamboo reeds with holes in it that plays music when the wind rushes through it, it’s very cool. The photo is the sun setting off behind the wind organ.

They dropped me off at the hotel at about 4pm. I stayed down at the bar area and met the owner of the hotel. He’s a very nice guy and he put a DVD in for my to watch on the big screen in the back seating area of the reception area. I watched Unleashed. It’s not a movie I would have picked to see on my own…but it wasn’t a bad movie at all.

After that I worked a bit in my room and then headed off to bed. Ready for week #2!