I’ve visited Holland four times in the last two years but it seems there are still things I have skipped out on experiencing. Some of them less pleasurable than others. Eating raw herring was one of the times I wished I played hookey on.

When my girlfriend’s good friend Milou Nicolaes came to Holland at the end of January, it was only natural that since we were there as well we’d visit her in her home city of Maastricht, in the south of Holland. She took us to the downtown area and eventually we passed by a fish market of sorts. She was ecstatic about the raw herring and convinced me with “You don’t come to Holland and NOT eat raw herring!”

This Dutch food custom is kind of like a “fast food” or an inbetween snack. The herring is beheaded and the guts are party/mostly removed. It sits in a preserving liquid with a little salt and maybe a little vinegar. Raw chopped onions are sprinkled on top and actually stick to the surface of the fish like it’s covered in glue. The texture is honestly that of a live fish. To eat it a person picks it up by its slimy tail and lifts it over their mouth. Imagine being a seal or a seagull or peligan eating a fish and you’ve nailed it. Then it’s down the hatch!

I’m a sucker for new food experiences. I paid for this one with a near immediate gag reflex. I won’t tell people NOT to try raw herring when in Holland–just don’t do what I did and ignore the word “RAW” herring. Don’t be fooled: It actually DOES taste raw. Go figure.

It seems like everyone on the internet loves cats. The internet feeds my partner’s addiction; she gets daily flickr feeds and so on, so how could I NOT have checked this place out with her while in Amsterdam. Here’s the lowdown on Amsterdam’s de Poezenboot (The Cat Boat) sanctuary.

Relevant Links: de Poezenboot Website

Last week on Thursday, the new host of MobuzzTV, Gabe Mac, previous vlogger over at XOLO.TV, was kind enough to ask me to do a Canadian correspondence on the iPhone ho-hah here in Canada. My little interjection happens around the 3:40 mark.

MobuzzTV was one of the very first podcasts that inspired me to try my hand at web video stuff. Gabe Mac and the crew over at XOLO.TV not only opened up my abilities to explore in this space they also turned out to be some of the finest people I’ve ever had the luxury of making friends with. After heading to Amsterdam four times in two years, they’ve made it easy to see Amsterdam as a new future “home” some day.

Religious visions happen every year all over the world. Some of them, like the one that happened in Fatima, Portugal take on a life of their own. Nuno Teixeira gives you the lowdown on Our Lady of Fatima, a sanctuary that brings people of faith together from all over Portugal and even the world. There are those who walk to this sanctuary as a “promise” to Our Lady; a trek taking days, weeks and even over a month to do.

Relevant Links: Our Lady of Fatima - Wikipedia

For many people, when they think of Holland, they inevitably think of clogs–traditional wooden shoes that come in many different shapes and sizes, decoration and style. Nuno brings you the lowdown on the dutch clogs with a little help from the fine people at The Wooden Shoe Factory in Volendam.

Relevant Links: De Vriendschap