We celebrated the Netherlands earlier this week because over in the Kingdom of the Netherlands on Thursday, they celebrated their national holiday of Kings Day, or Koningsdag. Every year the Netherlands celebrates their royal family with parties, flea markets, concerts, gatherings, and wearing orange.
We learned long ago why orange is the color of the Netherlands. Not only is it a symbol for the royal family, but it also used to be the top color on the flag (and on the birthdays of the royal family, the flag flies with an orange streamer of sorts tied on top).
So why did we already know that? Well, back during the last winter games, Hayden's country was the Netherlands, so he got to learn all about them. One of his biggest questions was why all the athletes wore orange, so we looked it up, and he's remembered it ever since.
Some quick interesting things about the Netherlands. The official name of the country is 'Kingdom of Netherlands'. It often gets called 'Holland', that's actually part of the name of the two biggest provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). So Holland is just technically those two provinces, but a lot of people outside the country will just interchange it with the 'Netherlands'.
Then, there's 'the Dutch'. People in the Netherlands speak Dutch, and are called Dutch. My understanding is that 'Dutch' is an old English word for people or nation. It used to include the people of Germany and they were either 'high Dutch' (people in the mountains) or 'low Dutch' (people in the low lying areas.
The capital of Netherlands is Amsterdam, or as Hayden likes to call it, Amster-dang. We tried to explain it was ok to say 'dam', as the city was built around the Amstel dam. But, I think now he just thinks he's being funny.
Along with Luxembourg and Belgium (which I cannot wait to do- HELLO WAFFLES!), the Netherlands makes up the 'Low Countries', an area of Europe that is extremly flat and lies below sea level.
Now, I helped my mom and her friend Jane plan a day in Amsterdam once (and I was rewarded with cheese, dishes, and magnets!), so I knew all about how you can travel the city by canals, get herring out of a vending machine, and avoid the red light district if that's not your thing.
I also knew about the Anne Frank house, and the Van Gogh museum (We also covered Van Gogh during art week).
And our landmark was obvious, we had to do the windmills, specifically the Kinderdijk Windmills. There's more than 1,000 old windmills in the country today, but Kinderjik is where the largest concentration can still be found. There's 19 of them that were built around 1740, and I'm pretty sure I saw them once on the Amazing Race.
Of course you can't talk Netherlands without mentioning the national symbol: the tulip!
Tulips, however, aren't native to the country. They were once imported from Turkey!
More than 7 million tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths take over the Garden at Keukenhof. It's arguably the world's greatest flower garden, and there are websites to monitor the flower status to see it in full bloom. It starts in mid-March and ends in May.
So, we found it fitting to visit Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival in honor of the Netherlands. (I'll get to that blog soon!)
The boys made their Netherlands post cards.
Calib's featured some tall people, because the Netherlands is the tallest country on average in the world (the average height is just over 6 feet).
Peyton has a guy jumping over the canals using the traditional dutch sport, Fierljeppen. Basically you run and use a long stick to help you jump over the canals. They also simultaneously try to climb to the top. It's a little crazy.
Hayden's card featured a guy on a bike, because the country is known as the bicycle capital of the world!
For dinner we had Dutch Stamppot, Dutch Apple Salad, and some mini stroopwafels for dessert.
This dinner earned five very enthusiastic spoons up.
First off, we've had stroopwafels before, and they are always a hit. It's like an ice cream sugar cone with caramel in it.
The fruit was good, but we did leave out the celery (not by design- I thought we had some, and we didn't)
But the Stamppot, it was on point. Basically, someone thought of hiding a million different vegetables in mashed potatoes. Really, there was kale and squash and carrots and sweet potato and parsnips and turnips and leeks. It was crazy.
We all agreed it was the best mashed potatoes ever. (It did take forever to chop it all up- and Asa nearly lost a fingernail in the process, but it was totally worth it). They were just light and fluffy and SUPER flavorful.
We didn't find Rookworst, so we just got a couple different types of sausages at Sprouts and cut them up for the top.
We colored Netherlands in a bright orange.
And with that, we're 66 down, 127 to go!
Next Up: El Salvador
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