Afsluitdijk Dike

We have decided that before we know it we will be headed home for good and there is still a lot of the Netherlands that we have yet to explore. So, on Saturday we decided to take a little drive and check out one of the dikes that Holland is known for. The Afsluitdijk Dike is 20 miles long and we drove from our end of it to the little town of Zurich. This particular dike damns off Zuidersee, a salt water inlet of the North Sea and turns it into the freshwater lake of the IJsselmeer. The Netherlands is known for reclaiming land and building dikes is one of the ways they have accomplished that. We stopped off at a monument that marks where the dike was closed when it was completed back in 1933. Here are the girls and I - it was a bit windy. We are on the lake IJsselmeer side of the dike.

We then walked above the motorway to the other side. Here's Rachel on the walkway above the motorway.

A picture of Andy and the girls on the other side of the motorway by the monument.

It was weird to be driving along and look at the GPS with water on either side of the road. The right side is were the dike is and the North Sea and the left side is were the lake is. This is a picture of the GPS as we were headed back home. After we had driven the length of the dike we drove through the little town of Zurich. We then came across a set of stairs that you could climb up to go to the other side of the dike. I stayed in the car with sleeping Audrey and Rachel and Andy ventured out.

Here's Rachel with the dike on the left and the North sea on the right.

Here are some pictures of the dike. It wasn't that clear of a day, but you're able to get an idea of what it looks like. It wasn't exactly what I expected, but I guess it works!

So, after living in the Netherlands for almost 18 months we can now say we've seen a dike. We are hopefully going to be better about quick little day trips like this in the future.