I slept well for most of the crossing but woke early with a digestive system groaning under the weight of the unexpected quantity of food that I had forced into it at the eat all you can buffet and then at six o’clock there was a collective early morning alarm call over the ship’s public address system that announced that the ferry would dock in two hours time.
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Thanks for the history lesson, Andrew (and photo of the Kinderdijk – I’ve still never seen it for real). If a country has such a clumsy name as ‘The Netherlands’ it should expect to get a nickname. And ‘Hol Land’ means land in the hollow anyway.
I read over Christmas that The Netherlands has 13 recognised languages, of which Hollands (Dutch) and Friesian are the only ones spoken by large groups. Nigeria has over 300 languages, incidentally. Hard to make that work, even though they have 120 million people.
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Thanks Richard – that’s a great fact – I’ll store it away!
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The whole Holland and The Netherlands has always confused me. I hope when I visit I can get it right.
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There’s a great youtube channel that i follow that makes videos devoted to topics like this… here’s their holland/netherlands one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc
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Thanks for the link – I liked it!
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Excellent written, Andrew. Mark Twain’s influence is felt 🙂
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Thanks for the comment Victor – I appreciate it!
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I have friends from there and they definitely call their country the Netherlands. And of course, they speak Dutch (where did that word come from?).
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