All Things Holland

So after waking up from delayed sleeping pills, which had been recommended to me by some French friends, we lumbered out to catch our train at the Gare du Nord in Paris.  We got to the train station at 5:45 and our train left at 6:25am.  After our 3 hour train ride we arrived at the busy and beautiful central station in Amsterdam.  Is there any big city that I have felt so at home?  I like the way they talk, I love their style, they have great comfort food, they are 'the' bike people, ecofriendly, and easy going. Amsterdam is also called the Venice of the north, complete with open plazas filled with pigeons, surrounded by beautiful gilded stone buildings, high fashion shops, cafés and this Venice is a bustling one.  Zoom! three heavy black bikes go by brushing beside you with the ring of their bells, stop! there's a tram coming through, wait! there's a car going down the road, watch out! for the rickshaw, make way! for the horse carriage, and even the occasional keep

I decided not to do a medal by medal count of the Dutch Olympic results for the 2014 Sochi Olympics this year. Good thing I didn't. It would have been repetitive. The 'Orange Crush' won an astonishing 23 of a possible 36 medals in Speed Skating with 3 'sweeps'. Take this into consideration. The Canadian team brought 140 athletes to Sochi and only left with 1 more medal than the Dutch who only brought 41... all they really needed was their Speed Skating team. They had twice as many medals in speed skating than all the other countries combined. In fact, it was so dominant the International Skating Union is looking at why the other countries did so poorly and is considering making changes for up coming Olympics. Speed Skating is a way of life for the Dutch. It's their unofficial sport and they backed it up finishing 4th in the total medal standings with 23 of their 24 medals coming in speed skating. The 24th was also skating... short track.