Velda and Joe: A(nother) Grand Adventure

[April 19, 2026] There is still so much to write about Ireland. I have partially-processed images, and half-written stories. We loved Ireland and can’t wait to visit again. But I’m going to need to come back to that.

We are in HOLLAND. I was looking forward to coming home, well, the home of my childhood and youth, but I wasn’t prepared to be almost bouncing on the airplane seat as we got closer, and I saw the tankers in the ocean and the giant windmills. GIANT windmills! Yes, those were new for me. According to the European Seaweed Association (who knew?), the ocean wind farm consists of 139 turbines, was inaugurated by King Willem-Alexander in September 2023, and produces enough electricity for 1.5 million Dutch households. They are located about 18 kilometers off the Dutch coast, and it turns out you can see them from our hotel.

And THEN we flew over the tulip fields. I’ve never seen those from the air either and that was jaw-dropping as well. We’ll be visiting the fields later, but the preview from the air was an impressive preview.

We arrived at our hotel by the marina and beach in Scheveningen exhausted, especially Joe. We had gotten up at 5am in Waterford, driven to Dublin, flown to Amsterdam, and driven to Scheveningen. And by “we” I mean Joe. I was the excited passenger calling out new and familiar sights. That may have increased his exhaustion. By now it was 7pm and we still needed to negotiate issues with our credit card that sent the security code to our old landline.  Joe needed a beer.

We found a pub that had some of the Dutch food I had been jonesing for and shared Dutch fries with mayonnaise, bitterballen (you are going to need to look that up, because there is no way I can make this delicious snack sound good), prawns and other goodies. Everything was deep-fat fried, and we realized we may have aged out, at least to an extent. I wish I had taken photos, but there is time for that later.

Good night from Holland!