I was born in Alphen aan de Rijn, a town on the Rhine River where my mother's family were into shipping--running barges along the Rhine.  When I was still very young we moved to Zaandam where I lived until I married Chris in 1953.  (Yes, that would make this year our 50th wedding anniversary.)

After we had our first child, we moved onto a houseboat on a canal in Landsmeer, a suburb of Amsterdam. If you check out the bicycle tour in the Zaan region, you can see where I biked from our home in Landsmeer to my parents home in Zaandam. Our first boat was a very small one that we outgrew after our third child.  That is when we build the houseboat that you see in the pictures below.  We lived there until 1965.  Two of our children were born on that boat. 

In 1965 we moved to a "real" house in Alkmaar that was provided by the company that Chris now worked for, The Hoogovens.  For a few months we had to find temporary accommodations because they weren't quite ready with our new home, so we lived in a small cottage in Wijk aan Zee, a wonderful holiday resort by the North Sea.

Then we decided to try a new adventure and immigrated to Canada.  Visit some of the links to my homeland.  And don't forget to visit Calgary, our home for the last 36 years.

Happy Travelling!!!