Between mid-April and early-May, the rectangular fields of North and South Holland transform into a striped carpet of yellows, reds, purples, and pinks. Narrow canals, seemingly drawn with a ruler, meticulously separate the stripes. Tourists fly in from all over the world to view this annual spectacle between Haarlem in the north and Leiden in the south, where the flowers are most concentrated. Keukenhof is a world-renowned garden where hordes of visitors walk the narrow pathways, visit the windmill, and smell the flowers, especially this time of year. 

On Sunday, a group of Windhappers (Alfons - trip organizer, Marianne, Willie, Elly, Twan, and I) set out to view the tulips from a less crowded place: our kayaks. Click Read More to see endless flower photos and hear about a minor mishap that almost resulted in carrying 6 kayaks over a busy railroad track...

[I wrote this post back in January 2015, but I keep it updated each time I learn something new! I will add sailing terms soon!]

While I consider myself a fairly fluent Dutch (/Flemish) speaker, I was surprised at my limited kayaking vocabulary when I first joined the Windhappers kayaking club last September. It's hard to convince someone that you're a competent paddler when they ask you if you know how to do a boogslag (sweep stroke) and you return a blank stare. In the same vein, many of the otherwise-fluent English speakers did not recognize the English terms that I offered up in an effort to reach a mutual understanding. 

So, to shrink this gap in communication for myself and anyone else in the same boot, I put together this list of common kayaking and canoeing terms. A big thanks to Tim, Leon, Sytse, Eric, and Jan of the Windhappers for helping me translate the more challenging words. It's a work in progress. Please contact me if you find an error or have suggested additions. Click Read More to see the list of terms!

Bridget, Stijn, and I met up in Gent for a one-way paddle from outside the city to the city center, where we partook in typical Belgian activities like beer-drinking and french fry-munching. We paddled under ancient bridges, circumnavigated a moat around a castle, and broke into a canal house after Bridget jumped into the canal to save her phone... Read on :)

Another guest post by Bridget! Nena's comments in [italics].

We woke up early to pack (again) and walk to the train (again) [Oh Bridget, stop whining]. This time the destination was Belgium, where we are currently spending a week with Nena’s extended family! After groggily getting out of bed and showering, we braced ourselves for rain and headed to the station. Halfway to the station it began thundering, and we increased our pace to reach cover before the downpour [mostly successfully]. I commented, "It's no wonder Europeans wrote such depressing novels, with such weather!" and Nena reminded me that I had already made a similar remark three times. Whoops.