First Stop in The Netherlands

I’m not an easy flier. Which shocks people. I can’t sleep on the red eye flights, every bit of turbulence causes my insides to shake and quickly pray, and I just sit upright for hours with my eyes closed hoping I will drift off to sleep.

Then we land it’s like all of that disappears.

I have said I hate the feeling of uncertainty when I travel right after I land. The uncertainty of how to get to my first hotel, first train station, first car rental place, first whatever.

Well, I didn’t have that fear this time since the car rental place was by the exit of the airport. I love it when the rental stands are on site. So within 60 minutes from landing I had gotten through customs (incredibly quick), gotten our luggage, had my keys in hand and we were heading to the parking lot.

People often ask how is traveling in Europe? When you have GPS it is much, much easier.

I purchased a GPS Europe map chip years ago when I drove through northern France that I now always take with me, but thankfully the SUV we have for 5 days has a navigation system programmed automatically. The hardest part was funding the English settings button in Dutch, but that only took 2 minutes.

So, the four of us set of for our first destination. Zaanse Schans.

This little community is a tourist hotspot of stepping back into the quintessential Dutch community with century’s old windmills still working, a cheese store with old world demonstrations and dozens of cheese tastings (my sisters enjoy cheese so they were trying the goat cheese with lavender, the Gouda, the coconut, the honey, pick a spice or flavor and they had something close to try), a wooden shoes store where they are still made, and a bakery where my sister broke down and got a delicious sweet waffle.

It truly was the best waffle I had ever eaten with my one little bite.

When we were walking through this little village community I kept thinking, “You won’t see this in Kentucky.”

And that is the beautiful thing about traveling. Seeing new places that you only witnessed on the Amazing Race or other travel shows or magazines before. Getting lost in the language. I would walk past families taking photos and have no clue what they were saying, but at the same time, I knew what they were saying, “Move in together, I can’t get all of you in the picture.”

It’s funny. That even though we have language barriers, cultural differences, political biases, we are still the same. Just people standing back and feeling amazed at what they are seeing.

It’s like we are on some kind of common ground when you meet other travelers. I’ve been planning – they’ve been planning. I’ve been researching – they’ve been researching. It really is something to consider that out of all the places in the world, I’m at the exact spot at the same time as thousands of other people who were thinking and imagining the same thing just a day before.

It’s just baffling. You may not think so, but with the billions of people in the world, and the millions of places you can go, we ended up at the same spot staring at the same windmill from the 1600s.

The more I travel, the more I see we are so closely connected.

God may have separated us after the Tower of Babel, but He didn’t do it to smite us or to keep us from loving one another. He has His reasons. But now, thousands of years later with translation apps on our phones we can communicate easily with most people. And I hope that causes Him to smile.

Smile that His children are finding pleasure in the beauty He planted in someone’s mind.

Smile that friendliness is shown to someone by stopping and taking a picture so the entire family can share in the same moment.

Smile at our smiles.

Yeah…I think God likes it when travel. Because it reminds us of how He was in all of these little details long before anyone ever thought of a windmill.

Even in the little windmill community north of Amsterdam – Zaanse Schans.

__ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-626611e5a82d1', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', onClick: function() { window.__tcfapi && window.__tcfapi( 'showUi' ); }, } } }); });