If you put a pushpin on the Netherlands on a globe, the whole country will disappear behind it. Yes, the country I live in is that small. On top of that, we don’t have exotic animals, our highest mountain doesn’t even go near the clouds and our summers last a week. Needless to say that I’d rather go on vacation in any other country than my own.
Yet, we have some beautiful places in the Netherlands, which I always tend to forget about. I don’t even know about a lot of them, because I’ve never been there before. Since I love traveling and exploring the world, but my bank account laughs at me every time I try to bring that up, it seemed like a perfect plan to discover the Netherlands for a change. So a lot of my travel goals revolve around that.
One of these goals I have accomplished last weekend!
No. 85: Visit one of the Wadden Islands.
In the north of the Netherlands, we have one piece of nature that actually made it on Unesco’s World Heritage List: the Wadden Sea. There’s beautiful nature over there, seals live there and with the right tides, you can even walk from the mainland to the islands. We have this beautiful piece of nature and I had never even seen it, let alone seen one of the islands.
Until last weekend. Martine from my improv theater group Schwung was born on Texel, the first and biggest Wadden Island. She wanted to show people from Texel what improv theater is and she wanted to show us where she came from. So she booked a show for us in the Theater Cafe on Texel and arranged nine (!) beds for us at her parent’s, who were happy to have us there.
Her father happens to host excursions on the Wadden Sea, so he took us there and showed us around. It was so awesome, walking around in a place where there will be sea a few hours later. Besides that, the Wadden Sea is such a special sea to see. Plants grow there, birds breed there. I saw living clams, petted a baby seagull and ate glasswort fresh from the ground.
I didn’t only get to see the Wadden Sea, but also the Northsea. Twice actually. On Saturday we went to the beach to swim (that is, some people swam and I enjoyed my time taking pictures of them and the surroundings). On Sunday, we went to visit the lighthouse of Texel, which was on yet another beach. And oh my god, I was totally blown away! The beach actually had beautiful white sand and the dunes had such beautiful soft grass. I didn’t even know we had such beautiful beaches in the Netherlands. It was like Hawaii without the palm trees. I absolutely loved it. It started to rain after we’d been there only for a short while, so I couldn’t enjoy the amazing scenery to the fullest, unfortunately. Now I definitely have to go back there one day soon. How awful.
During our stay, we acted in two theater shows, both of which were very enjoyable (both for us and the audience). But I must say, I loved the spare time we had even more. It really felt like a mini vacation. I’ve seen such beautiful things. It’s amazing this place is only a 2,5 hours drive away. I’ve heard that some of the other islands are even prettier than Texel (nature-wise), and I didn’t get to see any seals this time, so I definitely have to visit some of the others as well in the near future.
But in the meantime, I can proudly cross off this goal. Visit one of the Wadden Islands: accomplished! And since I couldn’t part with my camera during the excursion on the Wadden Sea, I can also tick of my second province for the photo trip goal.
No Comments