Driving around Zeeland

I got up early and after some Tosti's, I drove to the north of Overflakkee about 30 minutes away as it was here that I would be take the bridge to another island. I drove through the island of Schouwen and continued on the next bridge called Neeltje Jans. The bridge to Neeltje Jans has massive pumping stations all along it and I found it very impressive. I got off the main road and drove around on the tiny island and then I stopped to take some photos of the bridge. My satellite navigation didn't like the fact that I had gone off the track and tried to find a route back onto the bridge but it couldn't! After sitting there doing nothing for a while it just put up a map of the Netherlands and said "please refer to map" and then just shut up. I found that hilarious as it was basically saying i can't help you so i'm outta here.

As I was about to drive off i noticed a theme park on the island called Delta, obviously i had to go inside for a look. The park had massive working displays of all the dijks in the region of the Netherlands which was very cool, it also had a massive exhibition on mussels as they are grown in the area. It had a few small rides for kids, but also had zeehonden (seals) and a massive whale building you could go inside. It was very dark and wet inside the whale, but it was cool and had lots of interesting facts about whales in it. It also had a dolphin mounted on a wall which i found a bit odd. The most interesting thing was the display of the baby whale and all the bottles of milk it drinks per day (i lost count). I went back outside and had a quick look at the water park next to the whale and then i looked at some sting rays before i decided it was time to move on.

I got back on the bridge and ended up at another island called Noord-Beveland, I continued on from this island to Zuid-Beveland where I went to a town called Goes (doesn't sound the way it is spelt). I went to Goes for a very good reason, when I was a child my parents owned a yacht and it was usually Goes where we would go on weekends away. This meant i had to check out the harbour and shopping streets to see if I remembered it like i did with Middelharnis. I didn't see a single thing that seemed familiar, but after speaking to my mother about it later I realized why. It turns out that Goes has 2 harbours and I went to the wrong one, oh well it was still a nice harbour and it is always nice seeing new things. I had another yummy dose of Kroketten at a nice cafe, one was a kaaskroket (cheese) and the other was a vleskroket (meat).

At 2pm I decided to start heading to Lelystad, my next hotel location about 200km away. I took different bridges back to Overflakkee and went on the massive bridge called Zeelandbrug (an awesome bridge) to the island north of Goes called Duiveland. I stopped here to take a few photos near the town of Zierikzee and continued north to the next island of Overflakkee. I kept on moving and after going through the tunnel back to the mainland and a few highways north, I hit something i wasn't expecting. On the dreaded A12 ring around Utrecht i hit a 30km traffic jam, i have never experienced a traffic jam like that before. I was stuck in the awful jam for over 2 hours and I was so pleased when I was able to get off the horrid road and back on the A27 where i was going 150km/h all the way to Lelystad.

My hotel was at the airport which is very cool as there were aircraft taking off and landing just nearby. I mean little prop planes not massive commercial airplanes, Lelystad airport is like Jandakot airport back home. The hotel didn't have a restaurant so I went for a walk to Martinar flight school nearby and ate at their cafe. When i got back to the hotel I was buggered from all the driving (did over 400km today) and the traffic jams so I just crashed when i got to my room.