Veere - A Beautiful Town

My bracing walk on Sunday morning left me with quite and appetite, so we decided to have lunch in the nearby town of Verre (pronounced 'Vera,' as in Dame Vera Lynne) before leaving Zeeland to return to Eindhoven.

The skyline in Veere is dominated by a very ornate church spire. The highly decorated spire struck me as strange, given the generally Calvinistic nature of the Dutch.
Veere is certainly an old town and has many small narrow streets that harken from a time long before the motor car was thought of. In many ways it reminded me of my native Hampstead, both in terms of architecture and atmosphere.
We visited a couple of restaurants before settling on Pieter Bliek's 'Bliek Eten & Drinken' - the menu looked good and we were not disappointed. Not surprising, as I subsequently discovered this is the showcase for this very popular chef's fashionable wholesale bakery - rather like the La Brea Bakery.

Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside ....

Sunday in Zeeland was a crisp, cold, bright day and I started the day with a brisk walk to take in the view. It's a short walk from the chalet to the shore, and with views like this on offer, it's easy to see why this has become such a popular resort.



The bridge in the distance is not just a bridge, but part of an elaborate flood control system that was developed after the 1953 floods. It's designed to protect against floods if the tide is too high, as it was in 1953 when much of the country was flooded.
It's an impressive structure, providing effective protection without dominating the landscape. This is part of a 14 km series of flood control mechanisms that protect the area, and it's precisely the sort of strategy that would have protected New Orleans against the worst of that hurricane season.

Dinner at Emelisse Beer Brewery - Kamperland, Zeeland

Our seaside holiday resort is located close to the curiously named rural town of Kamperland.

I say curiously named, as there are no tents in site, and apart from the indigenous dykes, everyone looks decidedly straight. I'm sure there's a logical explanation...


For our Friday night dinner our friends took us to one of the best restaurants in the area; the Emelisse.

It's a beautifully restored Brewery, and is extremely popular with locals and holiday makers alike. The setting is interesting, the restaurant featuring many highly polished pieces of brewing equipment, the menu has a widely varied selection of local dishes, and the service was very friendly, but slow - book early to avoid disappointment!

Zeeland - The Roompot Park De Banjaard Holiday Resort

We arrived in Zeeland and went to meet our friends who own a couple of seaside holiday rental homes in a purpose built resort run very professionally by a company called Roompot who apparently run several such resorts catering to family holiday makers. You can buy a chalet here and use it as much or as little as you like, and leave renting, cleaning and overall management to Roompot.

Despite the fact that it was winter, hardly seaside weather, and a couple of weeks before Christmas, the place was not deserted, although I suspect that a lot of the occupants were owners, like our friends, taking advantage of a less popular rental period to enjoy a quiet weekend away from the big city.

The Chalets themselves are certainly well designed and comfortably accommodate up to eight people in four bedrooms, and are fitted with all the necessary amenities. Sadly, however, there are no phones (use your cell) and no internet access :(

Leaving Eindhoven ...

We're leaving Eindhoven for a couple of days to spend the weekend in Zeeland, a seaside resort about 90 miles to the east of Eindhoven.

From Zeeland, it's a relatively short drive across the border to Belgium and to Knokke, another seaside resort where we enjoyed many happy times. I haven't been there since I was a child, and hope to re-visit a few happy childhood memories there.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there's no internet access! No Internet, No Starbucks, I wonder how I will survive! Blog is unlikely to be updated until I return to Eindhoven on Monday. TTFN.