Benelux April 2013 -- Two Racetracks

Trout took most of the racetrack pictures, so he has them on his computer.  If you want more, talk to him.  He can probably provide them, maybe by Facebook, sometime in October.

So why did we go to the Netherlands and Belgium this spring?  The original plan was to go to Greece.  We could go through Amsterdam or Paris en route.  Trout chose Amsterdam because we'd been to the Paris airport before.  But, if we were going to be there, he wanted to see the racetrack at Zandvoort. 

I said if we were going to do that, we were going to spend a week in Amsterdam.  Then the topic of Spa-Francorchamps came up, as did the Bloemencorso and Keukenhof gardens.  Add in Bruges and the Kroller-Muller in Arnhem, and the next thing you know, you've got a month in the Benelux countries of the Netherlands and Belgium.

We flew to the Amsterdam airport, picked up our car rental and drove directly to Zandvoort where we had rented an apartment within walking distance of the track.  Trout drove over most days because the parking was cheaper than feeding the meter outside our apartment.

This is the entrance to the Circuit Park Zandvoort.

This is a car on the way back home the 1st day he was there.

Others lasted a little longer.

These are all pictures taken from around the track.  He could go just about anywhere.  If you look closely, you can tell that it was cold.

He didn't spend that much time there each day he went, but I think he enjoyed it and learned a lot.

We were supposed to go from Arnhem to Spa-Francorchamps, but Trout was too sick to drive.  We stayed an extra day in Arnhem and drove on to Bruges.  But, since it was a pretty short drive on the freeway from Bruges to S-F, we decided to do it on a day that they had track tours.

We did hit a little traffic on the way.

But we finally got to the main exit.

We got slightly lost trying to take a route in that was suggested on the track's website.  We did see some pretty farmland and more than one sign telling us where to go.

We found our way there in time to park, take a couple of necessary pictures and walk over to the Pit Brasserie for lunch.  I think we were the only ones there who weren't part of a group of people having fun on the track.  By the quality of the yummy food, we knew we were in the French part of Belgium.

We walked through this tunnel under the track to the restaurant.

We saw this monument to Ayrton Senna on the way.

And we saw the famous l'Eau Rouge-Radillon turn more than once.  The first part of the name is because of the "red" water (which has a high iron content) in a little stream near it.



This is the entrance we came in which turned out to be the place to meet for the tour.

One guy was already heading home.

This is a very rural area except when the Formula 1 Belgian Grande Prix is here.  It's convenient that there is a significant police presence here.

This drivers club building was the original hotel here.

This old farm building is now the medical facility.  You can see the Pit Brasserie in the background.

Our tour guide spoke English, French, Dutch and German that we know of.  Unfortunately, he is sideways here.  There were only 4 of us on this tour.  I felt like such a dunce later when I realized that we didn't tip him.  Aaargh!  Ugly American.

No doggy pooping in that spot at the facility.

When you see these pits on TV, they are all fixed up for the teams.  Each team has 3 of these bays.  Trout had me go to the other wall while he stood against the track side wall to give an idea of the size of the things.

Here is pit lane and the hot pit area.

We were surprised at how plain and small the area is where the winners stand.

We weren't surprised at the size of part of the press area.  They watch everything on TV and report from there.

We had to do it.  We had to stand on the steps while the guide took some pictures.  This one shows the track name on the left in the background.

And here Trout is the winner!

These TVs show every turn on the track.  During a race, there is one person monitoring each turn. 

And this is one of the stranger cars driving the track the day we were there.

We both had a great time on this day trip, but Trout got to go to his favorite F1 track in the world.  It was time and money well spent.

Sidebar:  On the way to S-F, we made a pit stop.  Trout found this chocolate milk drink in a cooler with the bottled water, juice and soft drinks.  It is sold in the Netherlands under the name Chocomel, but we never saw any dark chocolate ones in Holland.   If you are ever in Belgium, you gotta try this.  The word for milk in Dutch is melk.



Benelux April 2013 -- More Driving, This Time from Zandvoort to Arnhem to Bruges to Leiden

When I was originally planning this trip, I thought we would not rent a car.  However, I saw Trout Google flying north of Zandvoort one day and realized that without a car, it would be very difficult and time-consuming to get to some of the areas north to see the reclamation there.  The Netherlands has added to its land base by pumping out sea water and bringing in sand, and more sand, and...

We picked up the car at the Amsterdam airport and drove to Zandvoort.  We didn't do much driving around there, or at least I didn't take any pictures.  We left there to take the long way around to Arnhem.  I was sick as a dog with some intestinal ailment, but I opted to go that long route anyway.  Trout only had to stop a couple of times for me to barf out the open car door.

We drove through lots of reclaimed farm land.

 

Past some picturesque and typical Dutch canals.

 

Took some exits similar to this one.

 

Saw lots of working windmills, wind turbines and canals along the way.

 

Some inland salt water.

 

Drove through some fog.

 

Saw lots of large farm houses or barns like this with traditional thatch on top of slate.

Saw some rough water.

 

Didn't realize we were so close to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  (Harlingen is a town on the border with Mexico in far south Texas.)

 

Enjoyed some of the fun town names.  We did go through Sneek.

 

Saw nice bridges.

 

And entrances to major highways that we sometimes took and sometimes didn't.  The symbolic sign on the left here indicates a divided freeway.  The A7 is the Dutch number.  The E22 is the European number.  The E numbers carry through several countries.

 

I think this must've been a fresh water canal of some sort for this field.

 

Trout loved this bridge.  Most of the major roads that aren't divided highways had this green stripe in the middle.  No crossing that stripe!

 

It went over a tidal river.

 

These factories look like they are in the middle of nowhere, but the country is so small that the drives are short.  I'd guess there is public transportation to them, too.

 

We made it to Arnhem okay.  We were there until April 12th.  Then we took off for Bruges, Belgium.  It was raining.

 

I don't know if this was an optical illusion, but the windshield wiper on my side of the car sure looked like it curved.

The Dutch roads were great and in great condition.  The minute we crossed the border, the Belgian roads were rough.  Having said that, even though they weren't as good as the Dutch ones, they were still much better than most of the roads we drive on here in the U.S.

 

Trout and I have seen these wind turbine parts being moved around on our U.S. trips, especially in Texas.  This one deserved a photo, too.

 

I think this minimum distance between trucks thing was the first I had ever seen anywhere.



 

This is a wind turbine base.

 

We had to go through the middle of Antwerp on our route, so the traffic picked up.

 

The circled 50s are the km limit for each lane.  Who knew Hoboken is also a Flemish/Dutch name?

 

The vestiges of respect for President Kennedy are present all over Europe.

 

This is inside the tunnel named for him.  Tunnels like this are everywhere in the Benelux countries.  Almost all  go under water.

 

And it was time to turn off for Bruges.  

 

After a delightful week in Bruges, it was time to head back to the Netherlands, Leiden to be  specific.  Part of the route was backtracking.

 

I did manage to get a shot of a wind turbine top this time.

 

Another tunnel.

 

And another bridge.  I think the structures on the left are spillways.

 

More water.

 

Some salt water farming.

 

Some sand and scrub.

 

Rural traffic.

 

And we're back in the Netherlands.

 

They don't want you to work on your broken down car in the road and block traffic.  We saw these pull outs very frequently along this particular road.

 

More water and marsh.

 

Coming back into a more populated areas.  By the way, the Netherlands has the highest population density of any European country. 

 

We had to go around part of Rotterdam.  It is the largest port in Europe.  There were lots of cars here waiting to go somewhere else.

 

There's also a major petroleum refinery.  For those of you unfamiliar with refineries, there are some flames at the tops of some pipes.  Click on the pictures to see them larger and maybe see some of the flames. 

 

And the traffic increases.

 

Note the factory symbols on the sign.  We're through Rotterdam now and back on a small road.

 

The same symbol is used regardless of the factory.  Even if it is a greenhouse. 

 

The Dutch experienced such starvation toward the end of WWII, that the generation of people who went through puberty at that time didn't grow as they should have.  They are consistently short in a country that has the tallest people in the world.

 

After that experience, the country decided that it wanted to be self-sufficient for its food supply.  The answer for that is greenhouses, and lots of them.  They're not for flowers.  They are for veggies.   They covered many kilometers along this road.  We couldn't tell how far away from the road they went.

Finally it was time to pull off for Leiden.  I love this picture with a working windmill and wind turbines and traffic and signs.  Here in the U.S. we think we have to have gigantic wind farms far away from the centers of population and spend lots of money getting the power to the grid from them.  In the Netherlands, as well as other places in Europe, it's far more common to see a few at a time, like this.

 

I hope you enjoyed this little drive around the Netherlands and Belgium.  Sometimes a car is required for practical purposes.  Renting a car on this trip was both a practical and a fun thing.