This year we are setting out on a bike trip through the Netherlands! We will be biking approximately 335 miles through the Dutch Provinces of North and South Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, and Friesland amongst beautiful polder lands, windmills, and charming dutch villages.
Stay tuned for more in August as we post from the trail!
So tonight we arrived at the airport, courtesy of the ever-gracious Caitlin (THANKS CAITLIN!); whereupon we trundled to the British Airways Counter and waited 20 minutes for their shift to change and check our bags. Our bags are packed, with extra space and weight reserved for bobbles and things for the return. Itineraries were sent, and the fur children are being take care of, thanks to the awesome Kristina! Thanks Kristina!!
Our flight to London was delayed because of the atrocious weather in the DC area tonight, and it turns out that we would not make our connector flight to Amsterdam from Heathrow's INFAMOUS "Terminal 5." The British Airways staff was able to get us on a KLM flight after a long layover in London, to put us at Amsterdam Schiphol airport at 7pm local time. We are coordinating with our AirBnB for the first two days to get the arrival details set
We nestled at an airport bar and drank until we felt it was close to boarding time and hopped on the plane to London! We made it to Heathrow at about 11:30 am local time after a horrendous flight over in a Boeing 747 with a busted cabin air conditioning system. The cabin was hot the entire way (for me at least). I was able catch a few Z's but not too many.
We ambled into London, tired and in desperate need of coffee. We found it, and began the 5 hour wait for our connecting flight to Amsterdam. While waiting in the airport, (Terminal 4 - thank jeebus not Terminal 5), we checked out the View Heathrow Observation Deck and watched planes take off and land. That was a neat opportunity.
We hopped on our KLM flight and we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we had made an error in our concept of travel and time. It's like when you get that chance card in Monopoly for which "The bank has made an error in your favor." We thought we would be on the plane for another 2-3 hours and were very pleasantly surprised to hear that we'd be back on the ground in under an hour!
We were glued to the windows as the Dutch landscape came into sight. Looking over the polders and buildings we marveled at the amazing splendor and natural beauty of the Netherlands, and we had not even gotten out of the plane yet! Jessi leaned over me and started taking pictures through the window, as we made our final approach into Amsterdam.
Very excited to finally be here, we skipped off the plane and made our way through passport control/customs. We watched in awe as EU citizens went through an automated passport control system, which includes a self scan of your passport, followed by a robot taking your picture to confirm your identity! Super cool! Why can't we have these things for US Citizens??! Can we not have nice things?!
After we made it out of customs, we got ourselves a Netherlands SIM card for my unlocked iphone bought our OV-Chipkaarts (basically like WMATA Smart Trip Cards) from the GBV folks at the Schiphol Airport train station. We hopped the intercity train to Amsterdam Central Station and grabbed a cab from there to our AirBnB for the night. Our AirBnB host seems nice. He is an older Dutch gentleman with decent English, but not the best. I was able to communicate with him a bit more fluidly in German, as I *bungled my way through the Dutch pronunciation of things. During the tour, our host mentioned the toilet being downstairs separate from the bathroom (this is typically European - they don't shit where they shower, folks). So later tonight I crept down the steps to "check it out."
Welp, in exploring this I met an old scary friend mine from my study/intern abroad in Germany days, the SHELF TOILET. Have you ever heard of the shelf toilet? It's a Germanic TORTURE DEVICE, used to confuse and disgust the rest of the world. Basically, you do your....ahem.... business onto a dry shelf in the toilet and then water washes it off the shelf and into the um....hole....which is located in the front. Think of a functional toilet design. Now think of the exact opposite of that. That's how these things are designed. Just so you know...there is always a toilet brush nearby/next to it. Use of this brush is um...encouraged/required.
The Dutch, like the Germans, are also a very methodical and time/order-oriented species. One common thread in Dutch homes are the calendars hung in bathrooms or other common spaces with room to write birthdays/annual events. These calendars typically do not have the year printed on them and the pages are religiously changed from month to month. Would not want to forget little niece Lindy's birthday. "Let's keep that on the calendar in the bathroom, which will hang there in perpetuity." I LOVE IT!
We settled in and ate something we bought in London to eat when we landed. Jessi teetered off to sleep, exhausted from the day's travel. Here I am at 11 pm updating our blog. Tomorrow, we are going to explore the city a bit and possibly trundle into the Rijksmuseum (Imperial Museum), which is host to the greatest collection of Dutch art history in the world.
We are spending a few days here in Amsterdam, soaking in the art, culture, and food, before we head off into the wild blue yonder on the biking portion of our trip.
*German vs Dutch: Here's the thing about German vs Dutch. They are two completely separate languages, but they have the same Germanic Indo-European roots. English is heavily influenced by both. I can use this to my double advantage....BUT.... (a big but).....pronunciation is a whole different game, folks. I've tried to pronounce the names of at least 3 distinct places while here and have been met with stares. I know where they are and what the words mean....but my brain is wired to interpret in German. I need to step away from that.
Today you're getting Jessi (with some slight edits from Josh)! Well ... at least for a while! Our itinerary for the day involved "jet lag recovery" .... you know, a lazy day to sleep in, drink some coffee, explore the city, maybe find a museum or something, and just generally explore Amsterdam by foot. Well ... if you know anything about Team Huffowicz, you know that this "so-called recovery day" turned into a 12 mile adventure of epic proportions!
We had good food and coffee. We saw canals and dykes and windmills. SO MANY BIKES. There are SO MANY BIKES IN AMSTERDAM! It seems like everyone here bikes - kids, hipsters, working professionals in suits, tourists .... everyone...EVERYONE! The infrastructure is so cool - and really set up to handle it! But... I'm getting ahead of myself.
We did the "sleep in part" relatively well, waking at about 7 a.m. local time and being ready to hit the road by about 9 a.m. We took a bus from our Air B&B into Central Station and started a nice long wander around the city. We found coffee near the train station and took our drinks to-go so we could start our wandering. We quickly found the city bustling with summer tourists. We decided to walk for a while to try and get out of the busiest central area before getting breakfast. Eventually, we came upon a cafe with gorgeous waffles in the window. I was hungry - and we decided to stop and eat some breakfast. GOOD DECISION! Chocolate waffle with a silky, sweet cream, fresh strawberries and walnuts ... my precious! I'm normally a "savory" breakfast fan, so it was a pretty big departure for me. Delicious. Josh was boring and stuck with a ham sandwich.
Our wanderings also took us to Dam Square, the home of the Koninklijk Paleis Amsterdam (Royal Palace of Amsterdam), known as the 8th Wonder of the World, and the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). We went on the self-guided audio tour of the Palace and it was fantastic. The Palace, as it turns out, was not originally intended as Palace, but as a Town Hall. It was super interesting looking at the ornate carvings on the palace walls. In particular, I took note of the number of women given permanent and prominent places in sculpture and design features. There are two women standing over the main doors by which tourists enter the Great Hall. One is the Maiden of Amsterdam, who looks down from her perch looking over three large atlases - keeping watch over the world. Above the Maiden is a gorgeous statue of the Goddess of Peace, holding an olive branch. AMAZING! ...ok Here's Josh...
Hello everyone! Echoing Jessi, the Royal Palace was indeed the Town Hall of Amsterdam UNTIL Amsterdam was taken over by France...yeah...I said FRANCE! Louis Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, was made King Louis I by the Batavian republic, which was formed by a revolution in Amsterdam. Ole' Louis got eyes on the Town Hall and decided to move in and have it for his own house in 1806. I'm sure it was a real bummer for the people of Amsterdam, because historically the Town Hall was open to all people. The crowning jewel of the Town Hall (now Palace) is the great hall, featuring maps in the floor of marble and ivory. These maps were the known world at the time and the stars. They used these maps to track their ships. Besides that, all of the government offices. After King Louis moved in, that came to a halt. Shortly after Napoleon fell from power, it was returned to the Dutch as a Palace of the Netherlands and official state functions (state dinners, receptions, Royal Family stays, foreign heads of state stays) STILL take place in the hall. It's amazing because right now (for a small 10 EUR fee)...you can just walk through it! No crazy security, no excessive royal family protective service presence...just museum curators, and a few waist-high clear glass barriers to stay behind (not many).
It was super awesome to look through all the offices, turned bedrooms and witnessed the beautiful works of art in them! Once Rembrandt's largest painting was featured in the one of the wings, but the administrators at the time were not pleased with his depiction of the Batavian revolutionary figure in the painting. So it was cut out and now a piece of it sits in another museum! It was neat to see the the town bankruptcy office, now turned into a bedroom. In that same office, Rembrandt once stood to declare bankruptcy. Things were not going so well for him at the time.
There a few very cool themes in the Palace's art and architecture: 1 The Universe (as interpreted by the Dutch) and 2 Day-to-day life and duties of civic employees and 3. Morality. The maps and the various selection of Greek/Roman Gods and Greek/Roman Tales described the view of their universe. The daily duties of civic employees were represented in sculptures above and around the doors to the offices, which performed those duties (and they were bitingly appropriate at times). Morality is an overlying feature throughout the Palace and many of the paintings contain descriptions underneath, which underly the virtues or vices they are meant to depict. For you German speakers out there, the place kind of seems like a Struwwel Peter BUILDING. There are stories of caution and example everywhere.
I suppose the coolest example of all three of the above themes that I can immediately think of is: The Bankruptcy office. The door to the office is festooned with locks and birdskulls around the door. A sculpture above the door depicts the figure of Icarus falling from the sky, his wings in shambles around him. For those unfamiliar, Icarus is a figure in Greek mythology, who illustrates hubris, as he flew too close to the sun with his wax-bound wings against his father's warnings. Anyway, Over the Icarus statue is another statue of skulls, empty wallets, overturned chests (money chests) and rats. Inside though, there is a painting which depicts Theseus returning to Ariadne from the labyrinth with the head of the Minotaur and a ball of thread she gave him in order to help him find his way in the labyrinth. It symbolized that the city would guide a person on the way back from insolvency.
Ok last thing about the Palace. They have a room where the condemned are sentenced to death. In Amsterdam they never executed more than 4 people in a year. It was a VERY serious and grave thing to them, and they took it very very seriously. They condemned the criminal to death in a room full of sculptures representing death, repentance, and virtuous example. After that, they would go upstairs to a marble floored room, where the condemned would kneel on the floor. The sentencing officials would kneel on the floor with him, and pray for the redemption of his soul after death. After that, the condemned would walk out of the window onto a scaffold, facing Dam Square, where he/she would face their sentence. Such care and grace!
After we toured the palace for 2.5 hours, we thought it would be a lovely idea to go for a 10+ mile walk around the city. We weaved through the old city, stopping for coffee and water as we went. We crossed beautiful canal branches over amazing bridges. The city is a marvel of engineering. The whole city is built around a system of canals, which allow for the movement of people and goods around the city and beyond. Navigating the many channels and crossings was extremely difficult, but we found our way around ok I guess. We were trying to get lost from the more touristy-zones. We succeeded in some places. We found the only Windmill left in Amsterdam, the Ship Building Museum (with an actual old wooden ship docked there), the museum of Science, and numerous amazingly serene and beautiful neighborhoods! The afternoon was worth EVERY step of the 25k we obtained today! The people of Amsterdam are amazingly polite and accommodating! We have had nothing but AMAZING experiences with the people of Amsterdam.
We walked through the world famous Bloem Markt (Flower Market), where tulip bulbs are sold to all tourists who seek them.
We scouted the location of our hotel in Central Amsterdam, to which we are moving tomorrow (planned). The place we are staying at now, is not as close into the city as we wanted to be originally, BUT staying in central Amsterdam is EXPENSIVE. So had an AirBnB as a soft landing place for us when we got here. It's been really great to stay here in Nieuwendam (Amsterdam-Nord) and witness what life is like for normal Amsterdam residents.
We caught dinner at a touristy steakhouse in the Damrak District, so named for the Dutch Stock Market. We had steaks and a few nice drinks, and wandered around the old city some more. We walked through De Wallen, the famous red-light district, while the sun was still out, so the prostitutes were all inside, doing their make-up? We took pictures of the Oude Kerk (Old Chirch) and Sint Niklaas Kerk (Basilica of Saint Nicholas) before we hopped on a bus for home. So here I am on our recovery day, writing this post at midnight....we are LOVING Amsterdam....we're going to need another "recovery" day tomorrow! LOVE IT! As the Dutch say, "Doie!" (bye!)
So I re-read our post from Day 2 and noticed all the half sentences and grammatical mistakes made in my half-sleep haze. I will endeavor to do MUCH better tonight.
Today was kind of a wash. Jessi felt sick all day and is battling something. She was ill from the moment we got going this morning. Despite that, we got the Anne Frank Museum and some further wandering in today.
We woke up this morning at our AirBnB, packed our things, and slipped out the door. We gave the house key back to the owner the night before. Luggage in hand, we slow rolled to the bus station with our large pieces of luggage and hopped on the bus to Amsterdam Central Station. From there we walked to our hotel, where we are staying tonight and tomorrow. We left our bags with the EXTREMELY friendly staff, and made our way over to a cafe for coffee and breakfast to go, on the way to our 10:30 ticket time for the Anne Frank House.
The house is a timed entry self-guided audio tour, through the house in which the Frank family and others hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. They lived inside a hidden annex within the house, hidden by a bookshelf, craftily pulled aside. The story, one I am somewhat familiar with, is even more heart-rending to experience in the ACTUAL house where the family was forced to live for 2 years. The tour begins with a walk through of the company business, which sold pectin and spices. Anne's father, Otto Frank, brought his family from Germany to Amsterdam and opened the company "Opekta," which sold and warehoused the above materials. In addition to the Frank family, another Jewish family (Van Pels), and another man Fritz Pfeffer, were hidden from the Gestapo for two years. The loyal business employees and friends of the Frank's saw to their needs as best they could, while the family hid.
The hidden annex (Dutch: Het Achterhuis) is the name of the structure in which the Franks were hidden. It was basically a 2 floor (plus attic) hidden addition to the back of the house. It is the name that an aspiring young journalist/writer Annelies Frank (her full actual name) gave to the future book she wanted to write about her experiences being hidden. She planned to complete the book after the war. Most unfortunately, she did not survive, as she was killed in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is not known precisely how she died, but it is likely that both she and her sister Margot died of a typhus outbreak in the camp. Otto Frank, the father of Anne and Margot, was the only survivor in the group. He returned after the war and was given his daughter's diary and other notebooks of stories she kept by one of the friends, who helped them hide. He later convinced a publishing company to publish his daughter's diaries.
The house made so many deep impressions on me, and here are a few of them:
1. The hidden annex is larger than I thought it would be in square footage BUT there is no furniture in it, as Otto Frank did not wish to return furniture to the hidden annex.
2. The room, which Anne shared was papered with drab wallpaper. Her father gave her lease to retrieve her collection of pictures and movie star cards and gave her a bucket of glue and a brush. She plastered the walls with her private collection of paper plaques, posters, cards, pictures, art, etc. It was like looking directly into the childhood of ANY little girl. It destroyed me, looking at her selection of movie posters, movie stars, quirky art, postcards and other things. She was just like any kid, decorating their environment, and adjusting to the situation by bringing comfort through familiarity
3. On display was a menu card with meals for the day, possibly jokingly prepared for the occupants of the annex by one of their friends, who was bringing them food.
4. Learning more about the people who helped to hide the Franks, Van Pels, and Pfeffer, was a lesson in compassion. The people who helped the family took HUGE risks to do so. They sacrificed so much of themselves to do the right thing, by giving protection to people being persecuted and systematically murdered by ideological monsters.
There is no better time in the history of our country for Jessi and I to have come here and witnessed the story of these people. With extreme-right rallies of white-supremacists, ultra-nationalists, and racist alt-right nutjobs in Charlottesville, where a man with a fascination for ADOLF HITLER ran his car into a crowd, this was a good reminder to Jessi and I of what can happen when society allows hate to grow. In the USA, we are allowing hate to grow more and more each day. We have a president, who makes statements, which do not condemn these hateful ideologies, but implicitly encourages them. Jessi and I have been watching the news from home over the last few days, and our hearts are broken for the things that have happened and are happening in our country right now. Being at the Anne Frank House today re-enforces the lesson that it is vitally important to stand up against the ideology of hate and to deny it further footholds in our homeland. May it be that the horrors of the Nazi regime NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN IN ANY FORM.
After the Anne Frank house, we found the beautiful nearby Westerkerk in the Jordaan district, as we continued to wander through canals and neighborhoods. We checked out the Homomonument, there by the Westerker, which is dedicated to homosexuals, who have been persecuted for their sexual orientation. The monument is a triangular structure, which protrudes into the Kaisersgracht (Emperor's Canal). There were flowers on the monument. It was very tranquil.
Random observation: Along the canals, there are these small green curved structures. It took me a moment to figure out what they were. I remember reading about this FOREVER ago. To stop the issue of drunk persons falling into the canals and drowning, while urinating off the sides, Amsterdam has setup these safe public urinals with privacy screens and drains! How evolved!
We walked back to the hotel. Jessi was not in a good way, so we asked if they had our room ready. Unfortunately, the room was not ready yet, but the staff was SUPER helpful. They helped Jessi out by sending us to the third floor common area, where there was a place for Jessi to lay down and take a nap. So we did that for a few hours until the room was ready. More napping in the room occurred and at about 6, Jessi was feeling better enough to eat something. We went out and got a burger. Yes, a burger. It was just sort of the best thing we could find her here in the tourist-zone. After eating we wandered a bit and came back to the hotel for Jessi to get some more rest.
Hopefully Jessi feels better tomorrow, and we can get an early start on the Rijksmuseum. We're going to take it slow so that we are rested and ready to go on our 330 mi bike ride around the Netherlands, starting WEDNESDAY. Wish us luck!
Today was our last day in Amsterdam (except for the very final day of our trip). Jessi is feeling better! We're not all the way out of the woods yet, but we're solidly on the way. Thanks everyone for your concerns! Jessi sends love to all!
We woke up this morning with Jessi feeling better, and we went to the cafe, which is attached to our hotel. We are staying in a fashion boutique hotel. All of the rooms in this hotel are unique and they are each an artistic representation of fashion in almost every aspect of the room's design or decoration. Our room is called "Infusion" and it is lined floor to ceiling and wall to wall with a fabric design of a black and white dream-scape. Hanging bare-bulb lights swing over the bed and the designs on the fabric are evocative of mountainous Japanese landscapes on a kimono. This hotel also features a Marie Antoinette Room, decorated in period furniture with a giant bodice hanging over the bed. There is another room that celebrates the frill-collar (like the ones you see in 17th century paintings). It has a mechanical 3D collar that runs over the bed. Another room sports 80's fashion with a tight rainbow skirt running around the whole room.
That brings us back to the cafe...
The cafe is cool because its walls are decorated with birds holding/wearing fashion items. The birds were drawn by EVERYONE who had a stake in the restaurant. We're talking about the owners, employees, financiers, construction workers, electricians, cleaning staff, etc. ALL of the people involved in constructing, maintaining, or staffing this establishment drew birds for the walls of the cafe. It's pretty cool!
We set off from the Damrak this morning and hopped a tram to the Rijksmuseum. HOLY MOLEY, you guys! The Rijksmuseum was spectacular. We OWNED that museum. If it hung, sat, or hovered there....we saw it...and I probably read the sign for it. Jessi was endlessly frustrated with my need to see EVERYTHING! lol
The Rijksmuseum is the imperial museum of the Netherlands. It contains art exhibitions, which are national treasures to the Netherlands. The museum was the crowning jewel of our time in Amsterdam. There were so many amazing things to see in the museum. It was separated into time periods: 1100-1600, 1600-1650, 1650-1700, 1700-1800, 1800-1900. There was waay too much to talk about in one blog post. I can point out just a few things.
1. Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" and all of the paintings surrounding it are insanely amazing. The symbolism and realism of these paintings in-person is unimaginable. The faces of the men in these paintings jump out at you. They watch you as you approach them. They watch you as you walk away. They seem to move on the canvas, like in Harry Potter. Before you ask...NO, Jessi and I have NOT been visiting "disreputable shops" in the city, and NO we have not otherwise been influenced by any illicit substances.
2. Van Gogh's self portrait is a jewel of the museum. It is small, and people crowd around it like for the Mona Lisa in Paris. I've seen reproductions of the work many times, but seeing the actual thing in-person is something else. You are literally in the room, looking at the thing that the man actually touched. Van Gogh's self portraiture was practice for his other paintings. At the time of the painting of the portrait that we saw, he had all of his teeth pulled and his face, according to his brother, would be unrecognizable to his mother.
3. Medieval art is almost all religious...BUT the age of the materials displayed and their history is astounding. There were paintings from the medieval period, which hung in churches or in homes, over altars, or in chapels. The interpretation these Christian men provide of their Jesus figure and his followers (jews from what we call the Levant) is almost comically senseless. I believe it gives you a unique insight into their world and their method of thought. The world was much much "larger" in those days. There was no instantaneous, widely available media from around the world to show these men who anyone else out there in the world was. Maybe I'm projecting a bit here, but I imagine that in their limited worldview, they supposed everyone just looked and acted the same. Or was it something more sinister? Were their paintings and depictions propaganda tools for the European way of life and for the rest of the world to promote an image of their religious figures as white men? Anyway these things were REALLY OLD and there were cool swords and shields and armor and stuff too....so there ya go, kiddies. Chew on all that.
3. Jessi really liked the library. There is a 3 story library in the Rijksmuseum. It is one of the the repositories of knowledge for the people of the Netherlands in an earlier age. The library is lit by huge windows perched at the top of the steeped ceiling, and light pours down in near liquid-gleam over the books and tables below. A spiral staircase leads between the floors, and each floor is adorned with old placards with the names of old and famous publishers of books. It seems that the people are still able to come and sit in the library and use their laptops at least. I'm not so sure of whether they can read the actual books. The place smells heavenly. The whole room smells like old books. You know the smell...it's that smell of really old pages slowly losing their battle with time as hundreds of years go by. Behind us sat a large case of medallions, which were given to citizens of towns, who helped with flooding efforts over the ages. They are called Flood Medallions. The Netherlands is a country that would, to a larger degree, be under water. The Dutch are master engineers and reclaimed much of their land in cities and towns from bodies of water. Sometimes they flood. When the cities/towns do flood, people do great acts for the public good, and when that happens, those people deserve a medallion to commemorate that! Good on ya, historic Netherlands!
4. Small wonders Exhibit: Have you ever heard of a prayer nut? No, not Great Aunt Beatrice, who goes to church waaaay to often. Or that creepily polite lady from down the block who always says "I'll pray for you." I'm talking about an ACTUAL object called a prayer nut.. It appears to be a dutch invention, and if you were a richy-rich moneybags from the 1600's YOU TOO could have a prayer nut, because they were the bees-knees of well-to-do must-have devotional technology at the time. What are they? They are tiny...I mean TINY...wooden creations, which resemble an EXTREMELY intricately carved and decorated nut. When you open this "nut" you reveal a whole world of tiny intricacies. Extremely tiny scenes are carved into the interior of these small objects. There are sneaky wooden doors and flaps inside them that fold out to reveal even more layers of detail and intricacy. Common scenes from these are scenes from the life of the Christian Jesus figure. Everytime you look at one, you see another new detail and wonder..."How the hell did they do that in 16-whatever the hell?!" There were also small coffins carved in the same style as well as a larger story scene carved of St. George slaying the mythical dragon. Just check out the pics in the carousel below...no description I can give will do them any justice.
5. The Asian Pavilion: have you ever stood in the presence of an actual depiction of a god from India? Have you ever gazed upon life-sized monks, in intricate statue form, such that if you looked at the statue in your periphery, you'd think it was actually a person doing a "live-art" exhibit? Yeah...that was this place! Jessi's favorite pieces in the museum were two large Japanese Temple guardians. In stark contrast to the Tiny Wonders exhibition, these things were MASSIVE. They looked like two guys who were not going to take any guff from anybody. Holding ceremonial weapons to fend off ignorance, these two giant muscly and jeering guardians, stole the show of the Asian Pavilion, casting a large shadow over a field of ancient Chinese and Japanese artifacts. They seem to be looking down at you as the motion. One points down authoritatively, while the other holds his hand up with such force that I seriously stopped walking when I saw him.
6. The ships....I have not even gotten to the ships yet. The museum has a massive number of ship models that are made to-scale, by actual ship builders. They sit in giant fleets in the special collections room, and one occupies the seas of the main exhibition. The ships are part of a larger exhibition on dutch craftsmanship and seafaring. They were masters of the sea....you may have heard of that little operation called the DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY? every kind of ship you could imagine was represented and built my master craftsmen, who also build the full-size ships.
Ok, I need to move on because it;s 1:30 and we've got a somewhat early call.
We left the museum and toured around the gardens of the Rijksmuseum and the Museum-square, looking at the exterior of the Van Gogh Museum (we'll see it next time). We headed back to the hotel and from there we went out to dinner at the Sky Lounge, located atop the Hilton Double Tree, next to Central Station. there, with the best rooftop restaurant view in Amsterdam we had Bitterballen (Dutch fried comfort food consisting of balls f minced veal fried), drinks, and dinner, Because we are in the Netherlands, I HAD to try some jenever (pronounced yeh-neh-fer) aka gin. Gin is a Dutch invention. Cue the rainbow star and text, "The more you know!" We had dinner Peking Duck and a Wagyu beef dish, and we took a ton of pictures of the Amsterdam skyline at sunset.
We walked home through the infamous red-light district. It's super touristy and, guys, it's not that shocking. We HAD to stop off at the kitchy "sex museum" near our hotel. It was a waste of 5 Euros each (nothing too shocking in that museum) but, hey, we had an experience that we can talk about....but not on here ok? TLDR: people have pretty much been getting on with the business of "getting on" the same way they were hundreds of years ago and long before that. I'll leave it there.
Tomorrow marks the first day we hop on bikes, and we're heading to Nordwijk an Zee, which lies on the coastline of the Netherlands between Amsterdam and The Hague. Early call for breakfast tomorrow, so I"m finally signing off! One last thing...Jessi and I have been following the news and we're glad we're here right now. Hugs to all back in the states. We miss you all!
Today the REAL journey began as we hopped on our bikes and started biking for the coast!
This morning we woke up and made our way through the maze of old streets and tight alleys to an omelette restaurant, where the menus were carved into wooden planks. Breakfast was great, and we got there before all the other tourists started pouring in, so we were able to get in and get out. Shortly after breakfast, our bike outfitter called to let us know that they arrived with the bikes. We had packed our things up in the room and met with our outfitter, Baldwin, who had in typical Dutch delivery fashion, pulled his vehicle up onto the sidewalk. Baldwin was great. We got our bikes, panniers, GPS, helmets and pedals. We were good to go. We left our luggage with the hotel to be picked up by the luggage service, we hopped on the bikes, and we kicked off our journey by winding our way through the canals, streets, and alleys of Amsterdam.
Now, I've watched countless INTIMIDATING videos on YouTube about biking in Amsterdam. Everyone here rides a bike, and there is a lot of traffic. The videos always seem to show herds of bike riders squeezing through intersections and barely avoiding death from trams or buses, as well as nearly killing pedestrians.are typically segregated traffic in Amsterdam and most cities. They have what are called "fietsstraten" or "bike-streets." These are segregated path for two-way bike traffic, next to sidewalks. They typically account for traffic patterns , turns and such. There are seperate signals at intersection (like pedestrian crossing signals) for bikes. The infrastructure is amazing! Can we PLEASE have these in the US? PWEAAAAAAAAAASE! The truth is: yes there is a bit of skill required to successfully get you and your bike from one place to another without injury, BUT it is certainly not as bad as folks portray or interpret it to be. Once you get up and going, I found it to be pretty easy. It's mainly about being aware. You just have to have your head on a swivel!
Leaving Amsterdam we found ourselves riding along scenic dikes and through local parks on beautiful trails and bike-ways. The houses in the Netherlands a generally smaller living spaces than what folks in the US are used to. The Dutch pride themselves on self reliance, self control, their tap water, and living together in shared spaces. The Netherlands is a small country, and the Dutch are keenly aware of this fact, the Netherlands is about a quarter of the size of the state of Washington, if that lends any perspective to you.
Our path today took us from Amsterdam to the Dutch coastline via Haarlem, Noordwijk, Bloemendaal an Zee, and Zandvoort. We passed through some beautiful farmland on our way to Haarlem. The cows were out in pasture, and horses roamed freely in the polderlands as we passed by in the morning sunshine. The animals didn't need fences! They are naturally bounded by dikes in the polderland, and the dikes are separated from their grazing pastures by the water channels. It's brilliant!
We wound our way into Haarlem along the Spaarn River and found ourselves breaking for lunch at a cafe right next to the Windmill de Adriaan. After lunch, we took a REALLY awesome tour of the windmill, led by a charismatic and funny Dutch volunteer, who was formerly a school teacher. He led us up inside the windmill, where on each floor, there were intricate displays. We learned about the different kinds of windmills in the area, their uses, their locations, and their mechanics. There were moveable to-scale models of each windmill type, and the guide demonstrated how each worked. We went our on the windmill's deck and walked around the windmill, as well as going to the top floor, where the mill stone is kept. He demonstrated the making of flour with a smaller millstone and took us through the whole process. The windmill we toured was at times used to make flour, tobacco snuff, and brick mortar. It burned down in the 1930s and was later rebuilt by the youth of Haarlem, during an unemployment crisis, as a way fro them to learn a trade. The views from the deck of the windmill included beautiful scenes of the two large cathedrals in Haarlem, the Spaarn River, and nearby prison. That's right, a huge domed prison, where now Syrian refugees are being housed. It's no longer a prison. They've converted it into a place where they can house refugees, and they have incorporated education and trade-skill programs to help the refugees integrate and find work. How awesome!
We took a short visit to the Groote Markt (Great Market) Haarlem's city square. There is a special event happening this week/end, so the whole market was covered in construction equipment and tents. We got a few pictures and decided that we had better get along so that we made it to the coast before it got too dark or late. So we hopped on our GPS route towards the coast, and 15 minutes later, the woodland/parkland environment we were biking through VERY suddenly gave way to sand mountain dunes, covered in soft green foliage. gradually, the dunes became the only thing you could see for as far as you could see. They are MASSIVE. Before we knew it, we ran into the coastline at Bloemendaal an Zee. Does that name sound familiar "Bloemendaal?" Perhaps it sounds like famous a retailer in New York City aka "New Amsterdam" circa 17th century America?
We hopped on the coast route and biked along the sunny and full beaches. Dutch tourists swarmed the beaches today, and it was fun looking over the road to see that pretty much...all folks who go to the beach do the same stuff. One cool exception though: Jessi spotted a food truck being pulled along the beach by a tractor. She screamed at me in excitement, "That's how you do it!"
We spun our wheels along the coastline tourist towns and made it through Zandvoort. After Zandvoort, it was national park land FULL of those beautiful dunes. Along the way, we saw a deer with half his antlers missing in someone's front yard. Herds of those deer roamed the sand dunes as we biked through the region. There were beautiful green-covered sand dunes as far as the eye could see on one side of us. On the other was a steep dune, and beyond that one steep dune, was the sea. You could smell the fresh sea-air the entire way.
After about 8 miles, the dunes ended and we found ourselves in Noordwijk. We biked to our hotel and checked in. We got made fun of for having so much luggage (a fair criticism though), and there was a mix up in communication on the luggage. When I talked to the luggage service, I used my name. It's a natural thing for me, as it is MY NAME. All of our reservations are under Jessi's name. So the luggage handler had to argue with the hotel about dropping off our luggage because he had the wrong name. We've corrected that. Oi!
We decided to cruise down to the beach to take a few beautiful pictures and eat at a restaurant on the coast. Jessi was very hungry and needed something quick, so we wound up getting some food to go at a doener place. For the uninitiated doener is a Turkish cuisine similar to a gyro. Anyone who travels in Europe and eats out at a cafe/restaurant outside of an international tourist zone, knows the delicate dance of being quietly ignored at a restaurant until you make eye contact with a waiter or they finally decide to saunter over to your table. Food service is not the same here as it is in the USA. I think that's hard for some people, raised in an environment where an evolved concept of customer service is the norm. Here, waiters are paid a good wage, regardless of how many customers they serve or how well they serve those customers. It's just a fact of life here. I've personally lived this countless times for the short time that I lived in Germany and it sucks, but that's just how it is. You have to accept it. There's also a sort of difference in philosophy for eating restaurants and service. Europeans find it rude if the server is constantly visiting the table or fawning over their customers. Most people want to order their food and be left alone. The idea is to have a relaxing meal with your companion. If they want something, they flag down a waiter. That can be frustrating for visiting Americans. Just a heads up for you if you come here. The process goes: walk into the place and seat yourself. find a waiter and look at them until they make eye contact with you. Raise your hand and wave at them. if they acknowledge your existence, good for you, you lucky-devil! If not, keep at it. It's a battle of will that you will always lose. Haha! Repeat the above procedure for trying to get your check! That's the second part of "the game!"
Tired, we ambled back to the hotel and climbed into bed. Tomorrow we are heading to the Hague! Highlights include stopping at the Space Museum at the European Space Agency along the way and walking around downtown in the Hague. We have a short jaunt today, only about 15 miles. That will be only 1 hour of biking, so we've got plenty of time to kick around!
The wifi here REALLY sucks, so I'll be uploading more photos later!
Today, we started our day...WITH SPACE!! While planning this trip, we noticed that our stop in Noordwijk was inexcusably close to the ESA (European Space Agency) for us to simply bike by it. So this morning, Jessi and I woke up, and hit the road for 2 extra miles (4 total coming back) to take a tour of the ESA and see the Space Exhibition there!
The exhibition was neat! It takes you through the birth of the universe and our solar system as you walk through the beginning of it. Then you progress into the main hall, where there are exhibits about satellites, the history of space, the ISS (International Space Station) and the history of global space exploration. The exhibits featured an actual Soyuz capsule, a Soyuz capsule simulator, and life-size models of the Tranquility (with cupola), Quest (joint airlock), and Columbus modules. You could actually walk through the modules and feel like you were walking around in ISS.
They are very proud here of their Dutch astronaut, Andre Kuipers, who appears everywhere around the exhibition. They also have a national geographic film playing, which chronicles his experiences on the ISS (all via TMA mission launches). After we viewed the exhibit we took a ride in the space train....oh yeah...I said THE SPACE TRAIN! It's basically a little tram thing that takes you over to the ESA labs for a tour. We had to have our passports with us in order to enter the high security area. Our guides took us to their prototyping exhibit where we were briefed on the ESA's next planned unmanned mission to mars, which will deliver a rover to the martian surface. We saw a scale, tested model of the delivery capsule and satellite. In another building, we viewed (and actually touched) the tested prototype model of an unmanned capsule for delivery to ISS or beyond.
ESA took a while, but that was fine. We biked to ESA in the rain, spent the morning at ESA, and then continued our trip to The Hague just in time for the rain to stop. We wound our way back to the coastal bike route and got right back on the program of seeing beautiful sand dunes covered in soft green grass, moss, shrubs, and trees. Eventually the dunes gave way to hybrid woodland environments with sandy, muddy soil. Remember how we said that the Netherlands was flat? Well, maybe we were exaggerating a little bit, because....there were hills. Hills up over the dunes along the trail. Yes this is to be expected, I suppose! We climbed and fell and climbed and fell as we moved along the Dutch coastline.
We passed through some gorgeous towns and cities on our way. In particular, Leiden stands out. Biking along the streets of Leiden, we suddenly began to hear music! Whatever, I figured someone must have been playing music at a club or from a car, but there was no doppler effect. The music did not fade as we moved! It was just as loud and its tone/pitch was unchanged. I looked up and noticed SPEAKERS hanging in a line along the street, broadcasting music for all to enjoy uninterrupted as they walk the street! WOW! Jessi started dancing on her bike!
We also passed through the city of Wassenaar with its beautiful downtown area and square. There were sheep and cows just wandering around on the canal slopes in the city AND roosters just walking around near the bike path! I got pictures. it was so cool! Eventually Wassenaar faded behind us and we were once again in the hilly dunes of South Holland's coastal landscape. We came upon an incredibly old looking water tower as we entered the rim The Hague. The exterior was brick and it looked like a tall tower built in the 1800s. We rolled down hill from there into the city proper, passing the embassy of Iran and other embassies. If you're interested, there are some mansion-esque villas for sale in that part of The Hague. Just ask me, and I'll hook you up. If you need a miniature palace of your own, tucked away into the UNBELIEVABLE beauty of the Netherlands, this is your place!
Tired and hungry, we finally made it to our hotel for the night. We got our obligatory Dutch jab about our giant luggage, which was delivered earlier that day. We locked our bikes, and went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. After that, we took a short walk to the Peace Palace, which houses the ICJ (International Court of Justice), the Hague school of Law, the PCA (Permanent Court of Arbitration), and a library. Outside the Peace palace is the international flame of peace, which consists of flame brought from each continent and united there in The Hague for peace. The small garden, which contains and bounds the flame, is built with stones from all contributing countries. Some are corral, amethyst, coal, igneous rock, etc. Just looking at the various specimens around that garden was really neat. There is a chart, which tells you the origin of each stone.
Tomorrow: More exploration of the Hague and on to Rotterdam! Tot Ziens (see you later!)
We woke up after a lovely evening out in The Hague and decided to re-visit the Peace Palace and the eternal peace flame in the day time. It was just as beautiful! After that, we decided to walk around in The Hague to see the sights. We were not disappointed!
We found our way to the Noordeinde Palace, the working residence of the Dutch Monarch, King Willem Alexander. The Netherlands is a Constitutional Monarchy with a parliament and three other bodies of equal standing. The Monarch is a member of the government (Cabinet of Ministers) and is legally obligated to be in agreement (publicly) with them. There are means by which the Monarch may pull the strings a bit in his/her own favor, should he/she be of differing opinion, but he/she speaks for the government of the Netherlands and must present a unified message of the government to the people and to the world.
The palace is lovely! A gate surrounds the compound with the gilded crest of the Royal Family. Behind the palace are the Royal Gardens, which are accessible to the public. The Politie (Federal Police) maintain a presence around the palace, and I'm sure they have an eye on folks wandering the gardens.
The gardens are also amazingly beautiful. They contain monuments, sculptures, and a playground for children as well as rows and rows of beautiful flowers. If you know Jessi, you know that she's known to take a picture of a flower or two....or 5000. She loves flowers, so this was perfect for her! She thoroughly enjoyed wandering the garden. Near the garden across a pond are the Royal Stables, which still house the King's royal horses. The yard behind the stables is full of hay and there are stalls partially visible from the back. Unfortunately no horses were out today. We wandered the streets a bit and headed back to the hotel to jump on the bikes. We wanted to get a head start on Rotterdam, so we geared up and headed off.
The path out of The Hague took us through the city of Delft. You may recognize the name from the very famous blue and white pottery. It was EVERYWHERE in every store for tourists. It made it kind of UN-attractive. Yesterday, we spoke to a man on "The Space Train" at ESA, who told us that no one really uses the stuff anymore except in Amsterdam. It's a tourist thing.
The city square is breathtaking, with a huge cathedral on one side and the old town hall on the other. Both structures are incredibly ornate and very old. Shops line the square, offering everything you could possible want for food/bobbles. We stopped in at a coffee shop for a lovely drink. Jessi found a chocolate cannoli, and I found a waffle with strawberries and cream on top. Ohhhhhh yeah! :-)
Rested and re-fueled we jumped back on the bikes and made for Rotterdam, riding through the square and out of Delft on the opposite side. We arrived in Rotterdam and checked into our hotel. Our hotel for the night is the H2Otel. It's a hotel on a boat! We have a cabin room downstairs in the boat hull, which includes a restaurant and bar with dock seating.
We dropped our bags and quickly headed out into the city to explore. Jessi wanted a bite to eat and I knew JUST the place, the Markthal. The Markthal is an indoor market, which has a curious architecture. It resembles a large thick airport hanger. Along the outside of the hall are living spaces, and on the inside is the market. It is HUGE! The inside walls and ceiling are also quite a sight to behold. The walls and ceiling are painted with images that depict the types of foods and goods you could purchase at a market. It's known as Rotterdam's Sistine Chapel. Across from the market is the Blaak metro station, lovingly referred to by locals as "the manhole cover" for it's shape and design. It was made to resemble a UFO, but the residents of Rotterdam have a different interpretation. WE also found the nearby Sint Laurenskerk, which is the only medieval structure in Rotterdam. It was hit hard during the war, but it still stands and acts as a protestant church for a local congregation. More than that, the church is also used and rented for community functions and business meetings/conferences. We've seen this across the Netherlands as we travel, and I find it so incredibly interesting how the dutch use and re-use these spaces for more than one purpose. The concept of a church does not exist solely as a religious space. We love it! In the yard in front of the church stands a statue to Desiderius Erasmus (Erasmus von Rotterdam), erected by his hometown in his honor.
The architecture of Rotterdam is astounding. Everywhere you look, there is something to see. Everything is new, modern, and different. The city has a young, hip, modern feel to it. Jessi is completely taken by the amazing feats of architecture and art incorporated into the city. We could spend weeks here exploring this city! We wandered around and found the legendary cube houses, which were constructed by the architect to resemble cubic tree houses. People live in these houses and have to deal with thousands and thousands of tourists walking around their doorsteps each day. Each house is accessible via stairs built into the trunk of each unit. The inside allocation of space in the units themselves is a fun play on the concept. It's difficult to describe for me, so I will let the pictures do the talking. You can actually tour one of the houses (a museum version) which allows you to experience what the insides of the units look like. It costs about 3 euros per person, and we definitely HAD to do it. wandering around the cube neighborhood Jessi spotted some AMAZING picture opportunities of the port and bridges of Rotterdam, and we took full advantage.
We wandered the city for a long time, drinking in the atmosphere and enjoying the various buildings and sculptures all around us. Eventually, we decided it would be time to head back to the hotel to have drinks on the floating dock attached to our boat hotel. We had a lovely if not breezy evening on the dock enjoying some local beer and retired afterwards so we could get a start on our next day. Tomorrow we bike from Rotterdam to Gouda (of the cheese fame). Tally-ho, everyone!
Today we began our day with breakfast at the hotel. On this trip, breakfast in our hotel is becoming a sort of necessity, as we are not spending too much time in each city. Also...have you ever met a coffee-less Jessi? Not good! (This is Jessi: He's not lying! Jessi without coffee is a recipe for a disaster-day! We don't want that!)
We left the hotel and walked to the Maas river and took more pictures of the Willem Bridge and the Erasmus bridge as well as the de Boeg merchant marine memorial. The merchant marine memorial contains a ship, flanked by large angular constructions that form an anchor when viewed from the front. When the memorial was built, it was criticized heavily for lacking a human element. So the artist returned to the memorial and added a sculpture of sailors just to the side of it. They are bound in rope and depict a man steering the ship, 3 sailors, and a drowned man. In our morning adventures, we realized that it was going to be a cold and windy day! The wind was whipping hard and I (Jessi) realized that my poor ears were going to need some protection. We stopped at Markthal one last time for a "to-go" lunch from a Lebanese shop and visited a merchant where I bought a scarf to wrap around my ears for the day. It is probably the best 7 Euros I have ever spent! My ears were so happy in the wind!
We continue to be stunned by the dazzling architecture of Rotterdam. Walking around and looking at these buildings was the highlight of the city. Our path of exploration took us back into town and over to the maritime museum, where, outside, they have a model of a functional port with cranes on tracks and shipping containers. Rotterdam is one of the largest ports in the Netherlands along with the Hague. We ambled back to the hotel, gave our luggage to the handler, hopped on our bikes, and bid Rotterdam a beautiful adieu as we rolled over the mighty Willem Bridge and the Maas river. On our way out of Rotterdam, we saw some amazing things, including a beautiful mosque, and the stadium (Soccer - aka REAL Football) ;-P . We also spotted this really neat piece of art underneath one of the bridges along the Maas, which made it look like the drab gray concrete pillars of the bridge were curtains to be pulled aside to reveal Deflt Blauw tiles. A part of our route out of the city included the 2010 Tour-De-France route, as indicated by yellow paint on the ground! It was fun to ride along that way and feel the breeze in our faces and know we were in the footsteps of the great racers!
This ride was F-L-A-T. By the time we reached our big stop, neither of us could register that we had gone 10 miles! We took a ferry to Kinderdijk where Josh managed to completely surprise me with the absolute and complete beauty before us! I had left much of the planning of the stops up to him for this trip, only asking for stops in Rotterdam and Alkmaar and that we bike around the Ijslmeer. The stop in Kinderdijk wasn't on our "map" and I had no idea it was coming. The absolutely beauty of this UNESCO world heritage site cannot really be adequately explained. The Dutch reclaimed this land through ingenuity, using 19 windmills to pump water out of the polder and into a reservoir in order to keep the land from continuously flooding. The Dutch are MASTER ENGINEERS. There are windmills as far as the eye can see and they are simply beautiful. It was especially fun to be there on a very windy day because they were making a loud "woooooshing" noise as they turned - performing their function perfectly. We slowed to a near crawl on the bikes because the path was crowded with tourists. This stop was the highlight of my trip so far! Complete beauty and exactly what I thought we would find in The Netherlands. After we had enjoyed our exploration, we had a short bike ride to a second ferry stop which took us to Lekkerkerk. From there it was just a short 15 miles to Gouda.
Gouda is a beautiful but small town! We are staying in a very new Best Western! The hotel clerk offered a room with a bath tub which yours truly jumped at! A chance to soak muscles after 100 miles of biking? Yup! Bring it on! We explored the town square where there is a lovely church, a gorgeous town hall, and the building that holds the cheese scale for weighing the cheese (Goudse Waag). That's right. There's a building that contains a scale that was once used to officially weigh Gouda cheese! Now it is a cheese museum. Unfortunately, with the exploring we did in Rotterdam in the morning and the lengthy stop in Kinderdijk, we arrived in Gouda after all the tourist locations had closed for the day. We enjoyed our walking tour and wound down our night with a lovely 3 course meal at a piano bar in the town square. We walked along the canals of the old city back to the hotel and settled in for the night.
Fun linguistic fact: the cheese you call Gouda, does indeed come from this town BUT the English pronunciation of the name is way off. In Dutch the "G" is more like a soft "ch" as in the German "Ich" ("I") or the hebraic pronunciation of the hard "h's" in Hannukah. So, "Gouda" sounds more like "ch-oww-da."
A quick note about biking here. It is amazing. A long part of our trip involved biking on a one lane road that is used for two-way traffic. On each side of the road are two designated lanes for bike traffic. In the middle is a lane for car traffic. We were on this stretch of road for miles and I was constantly amazed that the Dutch drivers exhibited such courtesy. When a vehicle approached from the opposite direction, they patiently pulled aside and let them pass before continuing on. If they needed to follow behind me, on the bike, for a time before they could safely pass, they did so patiently and at an appropriate distance. Nobody honked or seemed at all upset that the bikes were in the way. It is a completely different way of life and I am in awe.
Our next day's travel are to the larger city of Utrecht! Onward (Voorwaarts)!
Today was a transit day from Gouda to Utrecht. We rolled through the Dutch countryside, marvelling at the fields and the polders as we went. The scenery is really like it all came out of a storybook! The green, the cows, the fields, and the rich blue sky are nearly straight out one of those children's golden books! Our distance today was 42 km and they all went down so quickly, we hardly noticed them go by.
We stopped for lunch in a city called Woerden, which houses a beautiful church and an ACTUAL castle, Kasteel Woerden. We took pictured of both after grabbing a bite to eat at a local Doener kebap shop/halaal butchery. It's Sunday in a European country, and that means basically NOTHING is open. I realize this may be a foreign concept to most Americans so: basically most shops, restaurants, stores, etc are closed on Sundays. Sundays are for family and church. Need to go shopping on a Sunday? Forget it! You should have gone yesterday! Everything is closed. You'll find a few lotto places open for an emergency, and you'll be able to find a few coffee shops, cafes, and food to go spots. That's just how it works. I think it's a wonderful system. People are out recreating and visiting relatives today. They are drinking wine on their decks and doing outdoor chores. They are taking the day to make sure their lives are in harmony with their environment.
While in Woerden we noticed a GIANT blow up duck in the pond next to the castle moat. It turns out that this is "Woerdy" the Woerden duck, of course. He's just chilling out there on a dock, wearing his Fonzy get-up without the leather jacket and giving a thumbs up. "Aaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"
We walked into Woerden after slurping down some delicious doener kebab and got a look at the church square. There is a curious memorial to printers that we took a picture of for later inspection, and there were cafes around the square open. We capped off our stay in Woerden with a delicious coffee and got back on the way to Utrecht.
We could tell that we were nearing the city of Utrecht as the nature faded slowly into the horizon behind us. We crossed the Rhine river and found our hotel in short fashion. We are holed up in a hotel right over near the central train station, which is currently under renovation. We are centrally located, but it's challenging to get around with the construction going on. Jessi and I made our way into the old city for the evening. Utrecht is very very old. It was first settled by the Romans as a frontier forts. They named it Traiectum or "River Crossing" for its place along the Rhine river. The Roman name carried over into the Dutch language as "trecht" (crossing) and the "U" from "uu" became an "overcrossing," hence: the name Utrecht. During the Holy Roman Empire, it was the prince-bishopric of a region, ruled over by the Catholic bishops. Utrecht was and is a religious capital in the Netherlands. After the time of the Holy Roman Empire (short period for Utrecht) a secular government supplanted the bishop and religious leaders. Utrecht has thrived and sprawled.
Some remnants of ages past remain in the city. Most notable among them is the Dom Tor (Cathedral Tower). The people in Utrecht built a large tower with carrilon with the intention of connecting it to the nearby cathedral as the corning achievement of the cathedral They did so, but it was knocked down by a tornado before it was completed, seperating the tower from the cathedral. A sign from their god maybe? it was decided to leave the tower as is. According to a story I heard, homosexual men met in the rubble of the cathedral portion, and some were caught and prosecuted under ancient and hateful laws. Today, there is a memorial to those men in the place where the rubble once lay.
There are also traces of the original Roman fort, which are under ground and may be explored....any day other than Sunday. So, we missed that unfortunately.
We found the Academy of Engineers for the University of Utrecht, which has a really awesome spherical monument in front of it called "Sol." The monument represents one billionth of the size of the sun and was installed in 1993.
Jessi and I wandered around the city and found an ancient looking water tower, which resembled a fairy-tale castle tower in the middle of town. It sits right in the middle of a street and is being converted into office/living space currently. One or two people live inside right now.
We wandered back to the Oudegracht (old canal) and found a lovely Pannekoeken (pancake) restaurant down on the bottom level of the medieval canal. We had an absolutely lovely dinner of pancakes and Dutch beer and then walked back to the hotel to turn in for the big ride tomorrow! Tomorrow we're looking forward to our stop in Amersfoort, where the medieval town walls still stand!
Today was another transit day, as we began our flyby of the various seas and lakes which surround the Netherlands most recent provincial addition, Flevoland. We wound our way through cities with medieval histories all the way up the Zuiderzeeroute. Incidentally, when I say that Flevoland is the Netherlands newest province, I'm not joking and I'm not referring to land acquisition through war, conflict, or sudden annexation (cough....CRIMEA....cough!). The actual land mass of Flevoland has only existed since 1960, because before that, IT WAS COMPLETELY UNDER WATER! I'll say it again, the Dutch are master engineers!
Today, we left the Dutch province or Utrecht and entered the province of Gelderland. We had two goals:
1. Make it to Nuunspeet in one piece (we were tired)
2. Gaze upon the amazing beauty of the medieval city of Amersfoort.
SPOILER ALERT: We achieved both of those goals...and then some! TLDR: PRETTY PICTURES BELOW!
Amersfoort was truly one of the coolest places I've ever been. The city still has partially intact walls from the 15th century, and there is a GIANT church tower, which you can actually climb to the top of.
Amersfoort is named for its placement at the ford of the Eem River (formerly the Amer River), hence its name. I'm learning that the Dutch are nothing if not practical. Amersfoort has a curious legend. A girl, who came to Amersfoort in 1444 to enter the St. Agnes Convent had brought a small wooden virgin Mary statue with her. The legend goes that she was ashamed of how cheap it was, so she threw it into the canal. That night some other woman had a dream about fishing the figurine out of the canal. She awoke the next morning and retrieved the statue from where it was tossed in. She took it home with her and lit a candle in front of it and walked away. Well, she kept coming back and noticed that the candle never burned down. It just kept burning and burning. I guess she found the energizer bunny of candles? Whatever, the point is that people found out about this and started to flock to the town as pilgrims. The figure was said to cause miracles and healing. Amersfoort got a TON of money from pilgrims coming into town. The head cleric of the church was "divinely instructed" to use that money to build a giant tower and then a church with all that delicious money. Maybe it would have been nice to use that money to feed the poor or clothe the naked like the Christian's Jesus taught in their beatitudes? Nope! Build a tower!
Well we're glad they did, because it's massively cool! at 99 meters ~320 feet high, the tower looms over the city. It houses not 1 BUT 2 carillons. In fact, Amersfoort is only one of two places in the entire world with an academy for Carillon players, and the final exams are done from the same "Our Lady of Amersfoort Tower." One of those carillons is smaller, but the other is MASSIVE, and the largest bell they have weighs 800 kg or ~1760 lbs. The carillons are built into the tower onto their own free-standing massive wooden structure, like a 3D boxy bell chamber. They cannot be attached to the tower, because of their massive weights and sizes. When they ring, they shake whatever they are attached to. If they were attached to the actual tower, they would eventually shake the thing apart until they finally fell (with the tower) onto the city. Fun fact: The expensive church once attached to that tower is gone. It turns out that, in typical Dutch fashion, the church became used for other important town functions. Once it was used as an ammunition depot. In fact, that was its FINAL use for the city. The story goes that one day some dumb-ass soldier noticed some rust on the outside of an old grenade (yes they had grenades back then) and he went to scrape the rust off of it. Knife meets metal...sparks fly, and the church goes BOOM and burns down. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!
We know all of this cool stuff because we took a guided tour of the tower and climbed all 365 steps to the top of it with a guide, who talked about the history of the city. We stopped at each stage of construction in the tower, as our awesome Dutch tour guide talked about everything in great detail. He didn't speak very much English, but my German is still up to par. I was able to decipher and translate most of what he was saying to Jessi. There were of course big gaps as he spoke hurriedly and in subject-specific terms, but I was able to get the main point across. Because his English was not so great, he and I got along pretty well in Dutch, German, and English in that order. It was fun to watch as he quizzed the young Dutch on the tour with us about the cities on the skyline and shook his head with embarrassment as they got each wrong. I guess that happens everywhere, as I've seen that happen all the time back home!
We finished up our tour and walked around the town to see the old "wallhouses," comprised of materials that the original medieval city walls were. We also saw the city gates. The Koppelpoort, on the north side of the city was a sight to behold. This city gate straddles the river and has access to the city from the land as well. The people of the city could control access to the city by land and by water. Just to make an impression, they used prisoners to open and close the water gates. There is a "tit coop" on the front, which was a wooden box with open bottom through which they could poor scalding hot things onto people trying to invade the city. SUPER COOL!
We hopped back on our bikes and made for Nuunspeet, where we would sleep for the night. The long wide-open fields of South Holland and Utrecht slowly became wooded hollows and thick forests as we pedaled our way forward. Tired and sore, we made it to the NH Sparrenhorst Hotel in Rural Nunspeet. The hotel was a godsend, and we were happy for the rest and relaxation. We spent a lot of time in Amersfoort and wound up coming into Nunspeet a bit late. Jessi made us reservations for dinner at the restaurant and later announced to me that she requested a surprise meal for us. It was really awesome. Basically, we told the chef our food preferences/allergies, and the chef prepared a surprise meal on the spot for each of us, according to our preferences: Sea bass for Jessi and slow cooked veal for me. It was delicious! Full and tired, we ambled back up to our room to work on the blog and get some sleep. It was then that I found out that their wifi is AWFUL. In order to be able to to anything other than load their wifi security page, you have to buy their executive internet package. FORGET IT! This post is coming at you a day late. Apologies!
"Tomorrow" we're off to the fairy-tale beauty of Giethorn! Stay tuned!
Today, we left the deep woods of the Dutch province Gelderland and entered the flat polders of the province of Overijssel. This was our second longest day of the trip, about 74 km (45 miles). We stopped at the provincial capital, Zwolle, for some lunch and a break, where we explored St. Michael's church on the town square.
Zwolle was founded by Frisian merchants and the army of Charlemagne. The name means "hill" as in the English "to swell," because the city sits on a hill at the confluence of a few rivers. The residents of the city are called Blauwvingers ("Blue fingers") due to a conflict that occurred with the neighboring town Kampen. You see, Zwolle fell on some hard times financially and St. Michael's tower fell in the 1680's. They sold the bells from their tower to the neighboring town of Kampen, but they may have omitted to mention the fact that the bells took a hundred foot drop first. Also, the city of Zwolle may have jacked up the price a bit, to pad their need for money.
Well, Kampen was not too happy to be in receipt of these VERY expensive broken bells, which they were OBLIGATED to pay for, based on the agreement. So they gave Zwolle the biggest "middle finger" they could. Basically, they did the equivalent of paying Zwolle in pennies. They provided the entire sum completely in copper coins. Because Zwolle distrusted the city of Kampen so, they had to count EVERY SINGLE COIN in order to make sure that full payment was made. Handling and counting all of this copper turned the fingers of the counters blue, and thusly, their nickname was born!
Jessi was ecstatic to find a water fountain, which provided drinkable water. One constant complaint has been the lack of free publicly accessible drinking water. We were warned before we came here, but I don't think that we had anticipated the lack of this particular infrastructure. Good news though, the Dutch have infrastructure for EVERYTHING ELSE! (PS: It's Jessi: I've been calling this water fountain the Dutch Holy Grail. It was truly miraculous!)
We hopped back on the bikes and made our way towards the fairy-tale village of Giethoorn (sounds more like "hhheat-horn" in Dutch). I call it a fairy-tale village, because...that's what it looks like. It looks like someone reached into some ancient idyllic fairy-tale and pulled out this village and made it a reality. The village of Giethoorn is not accessible by car in the strictest sense. It is located on the side of a lake, and the residents' primary transportation are biking and boating along the canals, which separate the houses from one another like streets anywhere else. The entire village is picturesque to say the least. It is also, of course, flooded with tourists. The pamphlet our hotel gave us calls the village the "Venice of the North" and we can see why - with the canals, narrow streets, and walk-able streets.
Jessi and I pulled into our hotel and marveled at the whirl-pool spa tub. This was going to be good! We headed into Giethoorn, a short walk down the road past all the tourist traps and shops. WOW....just WOW! We wandered the southern part of the town and stopped every two steps to take pictures. You can rent boats to navigate the canals, which we are considering for tomorrow. The bridges and the flowers and the canals are breathtaking. Many many thanks to our friend Rachel for pointing this place out to us. It is very truly breathtaking!
We took a walk down a deserted street and saw the lake from afar. We spied a cat rolling on the path in front of one of the amazing houses, and we saw another just sitting outside the fence, watching us with curiosity...possibly watching the hens and roosters next door too. ;-) The canals are picturesque, if you can get a clear shot without loads of tourists filling the frame. It requires a bit of patience! While we were walking I (Jessi) spotted a perfect shot - the empty canal with a swan framed just perfectly under one of the lovely bridges. It is probably the most photographed swan in all of Giethoorn since as soon as I got my shot, several boats rounded the bend and others began taking their photos as well!
We made our way back to the hotel and had an early dinner and turned in. We were beat! Tomorrow, we will finish up in Giethoorn and then we are off to Balk/Sloten. Tomorrow, we will be turning to move around the Ijsselmeer and we will get our first look at this massive man-made lake we will be encircling!
This morning we woke up in the fairy tale village of Giethoorn and enjoyed our morning breakfast at the hotel. We took our time getting ready, as our distance for the day was a bit shorter. It's the calm before the storm, because tomorrow is our long-haul day for the trip!
We took a final run of Giethoorn and turned the other direction this time to see the other side of the village. It was more touristy, so we were glad that we spent the bulk of our time in the other direction yesterday. We took some mind-blowing pictures in the village and then hopped on our bikes. The fields of province of OverIjssel sprawled into the province of Friesland, as we crossed into it. Polders were everywhere and EVERYTHING was so incredibly flat. Farm equipment passed us on nearly every turn. They were out in the fields with combines and whatever farmers use to rake in grass and mow fields. Our speeds went way up! before we knew it, we were biking at over 30 km/h (about 18 mi/hour)! Ducks, sheep, cows, horses, goats, and storks breezed by in a blur. before we knew it, we had completed 25 miles and were feeling rather hungry. We found ourselves in the town of Lemmer just South of Sloten, where we stopped to eat lunch. We had a pleasant tapas lunch and hopped back on the bikes to buzz by the beaches on our way further North towards the Slotermeer. It was at this point that we were finally treated to a peek at the Ijsselmeer, the man-made lake which we are riding around on this trip. Wind turbines sat like distant vanguards in the water, turning slowly. One of the turbines was actually located on land and we biked right past it. From afar, the turbine seemed to be moving slowly, but up close you can see how fast these things actually move. You can feel the force and see the speed at which the blades move through the air. Now I can understand why, as Jessi tells me, birds strike the blades and die. They are massive and powerful!
We wound our way up the coastline and eventually turned in and Northward towards the Slotermeer. Before long we found ourselves riding through large beautiful polders and eventually a small forest. The forest looked like yet another thing out of a fairy tale. Of course, it had a perfectly paved path running through it!
We rolled into Balk around 3pm and did a bit of laundry. I don't want to talk about what I've been wearing over and over again and how many times...
Laundry consisted of old-world style laundry doing, and it is now hanging about our room air drying! We walked down to the Slotermeer and gazed upon the large lake. On our way back up from the lake, we noticed a curiously noisy green cart moving in a nearby commercial yard. We stood and watched an autonomous device traversing the grass until we finally realized...it's an autonomous lawn mower. It's like a roomba! It was just trawling the grass in random patterns until it hit a fence or a wall! We could not stop giggling at the absurdity!
Tired, we ambled back to the hotel and had a lovely dinner at the attached restaurant. During dinner, we had a surprise furry dinner guest, a cat. He sat right down in front of Jessi and stared at her. It was like he knew....he knew she would give in. Before I could say anything, Jessi was already dropping pieces of fish for the cat! He ate up the fish and, of course, looked back to his benefactor for another delicious donation to his personal cuteness fund. Jessi was ecstatic, and it was all very cute. Eventually he got the impression that there was nothing left, and he moved on to the next mark. Later, Jessi and I spotted him sitting up on a bench at the restaurant, using that same staring move on someone else. It was also insanely cute, and I kind of wanted to just buy the cat a cod filet.
Jessi and I moved down a few doors to the ice cream place for some evening scoops and wound up back in the hotel room for a rest. We have a very big day tomorrow as we cross a 20-mile long man-made dike called the "Afsliutdijk" ("closing dike") which was used to wall off the Ijsselmeer from the North sea, thus actually creating the Ijsselmeer! Just a short post today, as we need to get our rest. Wish us luck for tomorrow! Dooie!
Today we started our journey early. We knew it was going to be a long day with a 20 mile jaunt over a dike completely surrounded by water. At the time we thought, "That's 20 miles with no bathroom and no refreshment." Thankfully we were proved wrong...more later. Our hotel in Balk was unbelievably tiny - 6 rooms in total! We even had to pay them in cash! No Credit Cards accepted! They offered a table service breakfast included in the price of the room. It was a different experience for sure!
We began our day, winding through the unbelievably beautiful fields and farms of the province of Friesland. A short list of things that were EVERYWHERE: greenery, grass, hay, barns, dairies, cows, horses, sky, goats, sheep, polders, jaw dropping beauty of nature.
We were treated to a glorious sunrise over the Slotermeer, a smaller fresh water lake than the larger lake we would be crossing later in the day. It was stunning! Plus ... you know - cows and sheep and goats all around us! It started to feel like we could not go 100 ft without passing a cow. Jessi and I began to play "Hey Cow."
For the uninitiated, the following are the rules of "Hey Cow" loosely interpreted for a friendly non-Olympic rules style game:
1. Select your cow. You can do this visually, and there is no need to point it out or call it out to your opponent. We use the honor system.
2. At that cow, yell, "Hey, cow!"
3. Monitor the same cow to see if the cow looks at you in response.
If the cow looks at you, CONGRATULATIONS, you've won at "Hey Cow!"
Jessi always wins "Hey Cow!" She also ALWAYS wins at "Hey Josh" (Which has similar rules!). I suppose so I should not be surprised.
PS: This is Jessi. I do NOT always win at "Hey Cow." I just always win at "Dutch Hey Cow". It's kinda easy because I always pick the cow that's already looking at me! Is that cheating? I don't think so!
We wound our way up the coast of Friesland along another large dike. On the other side of that dike is the Ijsselmeer. We stopped at one point and climbed the dike to take a picture of this amazing body of water, which we are riding around. You see, the Ijsselmeer is largely hidden by the dike we were riding along. All of the polder land we were biking through is below sea level, so we were rather happy to have the dike between us and the water.
Jessi here: You have no idea how happy I was to have the dike between us and the water. Although the views would have been stunning, the wind factor was already quite strong with the dike blocking much of it. I'm not sure how much more my poor ears could have taken!
We stopped in the small town of Workum for a much needed coffee, and then headed on a short while up the coast to the beach town of Makkum. At this point I have to point out a particular thing we've noticed. So there's this stereotype about Germans travelling to Palma de Mallorca in
Spain for their summer vacations, and yes, that is definitely true. The place might as well be a "little Germany." The thing is, we are noticing that EVERY SINGLE town we stop at on the coast here in the Netherlands which has a beach, is FLOODED with Germans. You practically trip over them in the street. It's pretty funny, and it's also perfect for us from a linguistic perspective. Most folks in the towns we visit speak German if they do not speak English well. Sometimes it has been easier to conduct business in German. Anyway, when we arrived in Makkum, we ordered more coffee and needed to wait about 30 minutes for the kitchen to open for lunch. We got our orders in right at noon and had a lovely and hearty lunch before we began the 20 mile crossing of the Afsluitdijk over the Ijsselmeer!
A few more miles up the coast, we were treated to our first view of the man-made wonder that is the Afsluitdijk. We hopped up on the fietspad (bike path) for the dike and started our LOOOOOoooooooooong journey over it. In fact, we spent the bulk of our day, riding over this structure, completely surrounded by water. Now, 20 miles is ACTUALLY not a very long distance for us. In fact, 20 miles is sort of a walk in the park when we bike almost anywhere. These 20 miles were grueling, and here's why: WIND. The wind was against us over the dike and it's some serious wind coming up and off two bodies of water. Our average speeds slowed down to a pitiful 9 miles per hour, as we were pummeled in the chest and face, while biking over the dike. This did not take away from our overall enjoyment of the thing, though. We love a challenge, and we were prepared for this to happen. We dug our heels in, steeled our sore quads, and pushed through it for 20 miles.
Jessi here: When you see the pictures of me with a scarf wrapped over my head - this is due to the very strong winds! Those of you who have known me for a very long time know how much I have struggled with my ears. The winds whipping across the water could well have ruined this day for me, but fortunately Josh had suggested the scarf-solution a few days earlier in Rotterdam. I know it looks really strange, but it was a complete life saver! It did an amazing job of keeping the wind out of my ears and allowing me to still hear Josh when we rode side by side and chatted along the way! Ear plugs would have blocked the wind - and also my hearing!
On our way over the dike we passed two construction zones. They are working on the locks, which allow ships to pass between the two bodies of water. Construction workers have their own small yellow bikes to use in order to make their way to and from various parts of the construction zone. It was pretty neat! We eventually made it half-way over the dike and found a Texaco gas station, which had coffee and a bathroom for Jessi. She was very pleased about this.
Jessi: Very, very pleased. I had expected 2.5 - 3 hours of biking with no services, breaks or bathrooms!
We rested and made our way over the remaining 12 miles of the dike. Before we knew it the tiny towers and wind turbines on the other side of the dike were getting bigger. The small gray line of North Holland was turning into a larger green'ish land mass. Slowly, trees and buildings came into view, and those towers and turbines got bigger. I looked over my shoulder to the Friesland coast and noticed that it had become a thing grey line. We were nearing the end. In what seemed like a very short time after that, we sat at one of the locks, through which ships were moving between the bodies of water. We were almost to the end. We could see it, but we had to wait for the lock operators to turn the roads back into alignment so we could proceed over onto dry land. We did shortly thereafter, and shared a Team Huffowicz high-five, which was so epic that is shook the earth around us! We were now in North Holland. We have come back to the province we started in!
We made our way through the fields of North Holland towards the town we will be staying in, Wieringerwerf. Along the way, we encountered some majestic fields and flowers, which we stopped to photograph. Suddenly, we found ourselves biking in comparable wind to the force we encountered over the dike. We looked up to see wind turbines turning quickly in the face of the strong wind forcing itself towards us. The turbines were all turned away from us. That is NOT the ideal situation. It's better to be biking towards a spinning turbine. That way you know that the wind is at your back. We trudged our way through the fields and found some shelter as our path tread through a wooded hollow.
In the wooded hollow, we made a pit stop and found our old friend, the dreaded Germanic shelf toilet....but with a twist. So, one thing you should know about most of Europe is that public toilets generally cost a small fee to use, usually 50 Euro Cent or so. While biking through this lovely hollow, we noticed a port-a-potty. It seemed oddly out of place and it was the first we've seen ANYWHERE! Jessi needed a quick pit-stop and so went into the potty only to discover that in the Dutch country side, the port-a-potties are flushing shelf toilets. The Dutch have flushing toilets in the wilderness! What the heck?! The toilets even come equipped with a toilet brush in case you might need to scrub the port-a-potty shelf clean. Yup, that's how all shelf toilets are. lovely right?
We wound our way through the remainder of the hollow and found our beautiful hotel. We booked a large room for 4 people, because it was the only one open to book, when we made the reservations. We have 1 huge room, 4 beds, 2 showers, one whirlpool bathtub, and accommodations of coffee for 4 people (or one Jessi). We got up late this morning and we're getting a later start on the day, because we've got a short ride ahead of us to the coastal city of Enkhuizen! We'll catch up with everyone from there! Ciao!
Before this post...I have to come clean. There's something I haven't been telling you about. It's called Hagelslag "Hah-gell-shlag." It's what the Dutch eat for breakfast, and it's magic. What is Hagelslag? Is it a meat paste made with goose beaks? Is it ground-up pig toes with cranberries? No. You take a piece of bread and you cover it in.....SPRINKLES. Yes, sprinkles! (jimmies if you prefer - but if you do, you're wierd #sorrynotsorry) They have various flavors of sprinkles from the rainbow plastic-y ones to milk chocolate, butterscotch, dark chocolate, vanilla. Oh yeah....it's soooo good! It is the perfect way to start your day! Try it at home! I think that Jessi dies a little on the inside whenever I eat it. She finds it repulsive. (He's right - it's disgusting. Cold bread with paste & sprinkles. EW!)
Today had a rather humorous start. We emerged from our hotel room for breakfast and scurried back to pack our bags, check out, and retrieve our bikes. All of those events went just fine EXCEPT for the last one. The night before, we had locked our bikes in a beautiful shed behind the hotel. The shed has built-in bike racks, charger ports for e-bikes, and complimentary air pumps. Folks, welcome to an evolved society! Anyway, what caused the problem is that the shed is locked with a pad lock, and that pad lock has only one key. Perhaps you can see where this was going?
So we locked our bikes in the shed the night before and dutifully immediately brought the key back to the reception. We're good people I like to think. We ensure that communal things are returned when we have used them. Well, it seems that someone else wasn't so thoughtful. in fact, someone else was a massive jerk, and they must have biked off with the key to the shed after dutifully locking it behind them. Fast forward to our check- out and the moment when the hotel staff realizes that there is no key behind the desk for the bike shed (Fietsenhok)....
There was a search....a mad search all over and under the desk. Other employees were questioned. We were enlisted to search the grounds out back to see if it was dropped. The receptionist's husband made a couple of trips with other keys in hopes they had another copy. All of this to no avail. The key was gone. Our bikes were trapped behind 1.5 inches of wooden shed door. I inspected the mechanism on the door. It's of a German design, made with steel, and none of the screws are exposed. Rats! I go into the lobby to report to the receptionist that we were unsuccessful in finding anything. At that moment I get a message from Jessi on my phone about a man in a suit breaking into the shed for us. The receptionist tells me that her husband is breaking into it and offers me a drink. Ummmm maaam, I think your husband is going to need the drink! I tell her that I'm going 'round back to help her husband, and she is both thankful and apologetic. I round the corner and see a Dutchman in a full 2-piece suit hacking away at the lock on the shed with a crowbar.
And here's where Jessi picks up with how this all happened:
So, we had been searching all over the back of the hotel looking for the key. It was on a rather large hook. We hoped that it had been dropped. We searched the grass and the yard area. Nothing. Finally, I sent Josh back inside to let them know - no luck. Also, I wanted to make sure they remembered we were still outside.... It felt like we had been out there for hours. It had really only been a few minutes, though! While Josh was gone, a Dutchman in a 2-piece suit came out of the back door with a key in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He says to me, "I hope this is they key!" He holds up the key. He tries the much-too-small key in the padlock, and it does not work, of course. He looks at me, holds up the crowbar and announces, rather proudly, "This is the key!" I looked at him for a moment and said - "I can wait a little longer! Do you want to keep looking?" To which he announced, rather proudly, and for a second time, "This is the key!" and began hacking away at the shed door with the crowbar in his two-piece suit. I took a sly picture of him - because it was rather hilarious. I wanted to offer to hold his jacket, but I opted not to. It would have destroyed the moment. Eventually Josh arrived and the two men together broke into the shed and our bikes were freed!
Ok so we finally got on the bikes and we're off. The wind was against us again and my bike chain had dried significantly. it was badly in need of oil. So we trudged along the coastline of the Ijsselmeer viewing the same beautiful scenery as we went south towards Enkhuizen. On our way to Enkhuizen we biked on top of the dike wall, which holds back the Ijsselmeer. As we biked, we watched large ships with their huge sails traverse the water. Many looked to be fishing boats and many more of them looked to be recreational craft out on the water, crewed by adventurous vacationers. We happened upon an old lighthouse just outside of the town of Medemblick, which is no longer in operation, but stood out beautifully against the lakeshore. Speaking of the word "lakeshore," have you ever hear that song "Lakeshore Drive?" It was running through my head the entire time. I couldn't help but see the relevance, sans the obvious drug references.
We made it into Enkhuizen. We had made the cardinal mistake of saying "we'll eat in the next town" when considering lunch. So we were hungry! After checking into the hotel and taking my bike to a shop for some quick maintenance, we quickly found the tiny town center and plopped down at a restaurant and had lunch. We walked around the town along the shoreline through Snouck van Loosen Park and then back to the town gate. We walked and walked until we built up an appetite, and then we returned to a different restaurant in the town center. We walked back to the hotel for drinks. As we walked to the hotel, the bell tower in the Zuiderkerk (South Church) opened up into song. it was 19:34 and there was no reason that Jessi and I could think of why the bells would be ringing now. Further listening revealed the tower to be a carillon. Someone was up there giving a concert! The light was on in the tower and the bells rang and rang! We walked to the hotel to sit down for drinks and to enjoy the music. We arrived to find the owners of the hotel sitting outside enjoying the evening. We had a wonderful conversation with them about all kinds of things. They told us all about the region and about all the farming going on. They told us about the city hiring carillon players to come and play concerts in their carillon to ensure that the thing remained functional and tuned. They told us about big businesses like Monsanto, Microsoft, and Google investing in the area. Guests from each of these companies and more stay here while in town. We marveled at the beautiful music coming from the carillon, and we had a wonderful conversation with the owners, until we decided it was time for bed. One of the last songs that the carillon played was "The Sound of Silence."
Jessi here: This was REALLY AWESOME. I looked up some info on carillon towers that get regular play and it seems pretty rare. This carillon is played nightly for an hour by a society here in town! It is a partnership between a local charity and the town government to keep the bells in the 17th century tower in working order and usable! That's really cool! The owners explained to us that the town residents are split about 50/50 on whether they like the bells or not. They all like the concerts, but along with the concerts come a regular ringing of the clock tower bells, every 15 minutes long all night! Some of the residents don't really like that!
Tomorrow we will be on our way to Alkmaar, which we heard the owner pronounce as "Alek-maar." We will be passing through the city of Hoorn, which the owner pronounced as "Hoor-en." That particular pronunciation made me do a double-take. In German, that would mean "whores." Tomorrow is our second to last ride for this trip. We are stunned at how quickly this has all gone. Before we know it, we'll be back on an airplane, hurdling across the ocean towards DC. See you guys tomorrow!
Today we woke up early for breakfast at 8 AM. We wanted to get out on the road as early as possible to maximize our time in Alkmaar. We ate breakfast at the hotel and hopped on the bikes.
At Enkhuizen, pronounced like "Ehnk-house-zen," there is another dike like the one we rode over the day before yesterday,and it's almost just as big. This dike runs from Enkhuizen in North Holland to Lelystad in Flevoland. The dike splits the large body of water created by the closing dike (Afsliutdijk) into two lakes (Dutch: pl. Meren, sing. Meer). The upper lake is the Ijsselmeer and the bottom lake is the Markermeer.
Today, we biked South and West along the beautiful coast of the Markermeer. Over our left shoulders was the shimmering lake, bustling with sailboat traffic. Other cyclists and runners were out on the trails this morning, and there were lots of "Goede Morgen!" In Dutch, the "G" is fricative. So "Goede Morgen" contains no hard "G " sounds it's more like "ch-oo-dah moor-cheh" with a fricative "ch" like in German "Ich"). It's really hard to guide English speakers to pronounce this phoneme, as it's non-native to the language, despite the Germanic roots of the language. Imagine you're coughing up some phlegm or saying "Channukah" in Hebrew. (Jessi here: with my wacky hearing it took me several days to catch onto the sound, but now I've got it and can greet the Dutch in their native tongue! I've also got, "Thank you" and "Good Day" for later in the afternoon on the bike trail!)
In about an hour we were in Hoorn already! We found a cafe in the town square and had a coffee. One particularly lovely thing about this country: it is considered terribly uncivilized to serve a cup of coffee without a cookie to go with it. Seriously, order a coffee anywhere in the Netherlands and nothing else. You're going to get a cookie with it. Make peace with this delicious fact and enjoy it. Anything less would be barbaric! We love this country!
In the Town Square of Hoorn, sits a statue dedicated to Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who was an officer for the famous Dutch East India company, and a native of Hoorn. Before the Ijsselmeer and the Markermeer were formed, Hoorn was a seaport town. It's been around since the year 800 and it experienced its peak during the Dutch golden age (17th century) as a port for shipping and trading. The aforementioned Jan Pieterszoon Coen was known as a merciless ship captiain, who sailed to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and brought back spices, cloves, etc. He is also famous for making a "little town" the capital of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia. He called it Batavia. Today, that "little town" is called Jakarta! He was known as rather ruthless to his would-be enemies. There is a part of a quote from the man on the front of his statue. The quote is "Dispariert niet" which means "Don't ever dispair." The full quote is: "Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us."
The seal of Hoorn, is also a curious thing. It features a red unicorn with a yellow horn holding a banner, which displays a horn held with a blue string. So many horn references! I'm not sure how I meant that...
Jessi here: After we left Hoorn, it was a very short ride into Alkmaar! As we rode, I kept seeing posters for a fair for a period of two weeks and was wondering.... Are we going to get to see a Dutch fair? As the countryside rolled by, we saw no fewer than four windmills (In Mauro we trust - more on this in a later post!) and stopped for photos. At the last windmill stop, I spied a very large tower in the distance and thought ... "That looks suspiciously like a carnival ride. But maybe it's just a local attraction in Alkmaar." And so we continued biking. About 20 minutes later, we pulled into the city center of Alkmaar, 200 meters or so from our hotel, and actually had to dismount our bikes. There was a carnival right in front of us! Games! Rides! Concessions! It is the Alkmaar city fair! We walked our bikes over to the hotel where they kindly agreed to stow them for us until our check-in time.
The carnival is really neat! They have taken over blocks and blocks of this 700 year old city. Because the city streets are really narrow, the rides and games take up one side, leaving the attendees to throng through the other side. A historic church (Grote Sint Laurenskerk) is currently surrounded on three sides by modern carnival rides. I found it kind of hilarious. The carnival has a pretty large sized mini roller coaster (a mouse ride), a giant swing ride (what I was seeing from the windmill), an observation deck ride (with a bar at the bottom, so you can take your adult beverage on the ride with you), and many "thrill" rides. There is a pretty scary looking haunted attraction, too! The only downside to all of this is that the carnival runs until 1 a.m. and the "racing camels" games is right below our hotel window with the song "Bonanza" on repeat.... YIKES!
Speaking of the hotel - We stayed in the "Grant Hotel" of Alkmaar to celebrate the second to last day of our honeymoon. It's AWESOME! We got this fantastic loft-like room with two awesome views of the city. One of the nicer places we have stayed on this journey!
We did go into St. Laurentskerk and look around. There is a beautiful painting on the ceiling of the final judgement and end of the world. The floor is covered with tomb vaults from the 1600's. The epitaphs are written in old Dutch with Latin influences ("V" as "U" and "IO" instead of "J"). My parents raised me to be respectful of the dead and taught me not to walk on graves. Basically you can't NOT do that here. You have to walk over centuries old graves in order to go anywhere in the churches. Speaking of churches...they are all disused for religion....well most of them. The Dutch have really little use for that sort of thing (SO AWESOME) so they've turned all their churches into community centers, bars, and restaurants. The Catholic and Protestant churches were all basically run out of the Netherlands, by a people who valued education over religion. In their wake, they left the ancient husks of their presence in every town. The Dutch hire folks to curate the historical parts of the churches, and carillon/bell players to keep the bell towers and bells playable and in good condition. Otherwise, it's totally acceptable to walk into a church and have a beer or a coffee while walking all over the dead people of ages past and gazing on the history of the building. These are an enlightened people.
Today is our final full day in the Netherlands, and we finished it off by coming back to where we started, Amsterdam.
We took off early in the morning from Alkmaar with the intention of using time in Amsterdam to do some shopping and make one last trip to the Skylounge.
It was a sunny and clear morning, as we wound our way through the brick-covered streets of the old city of Alkmaar. We passed the Waagplein (Scale square) where they have a traditional cheese market every Friday, during the summer. There is also a traditional cheese scale inside the building at the Waagplein, upon which they weigh the cheese brought to the market. Unfortunately, the whole thing is mostly ceremonial, you can't buy cheese at the market. The event is meant to be a show for tourists.
We passed out of the city of Alkmaar and made our way along the pre-determined route through more beautiful polders and fields. There were a few windmills (Windmolen) along the way, but there was a particular tourist stop along the way, which really made the ride special. We were delighted to pass through Zaanse Schans. This area holds 8 historic windmills, which were moved from their original locations and preserved along the river with museums attached. The windmills served various purposes such as: oil milling, mustard milling, saw mill, and a dye mill. These mills were not turning like the ones at Kinderdijk, but they were decorated and painted ornately. Each windmill has a name like "het jonge schaap" ("the young sheep") or "De Kat" ("The Cat"). I'm not sure if the names have much to do with their functions.
The place was FLOODED with tourists, and it was about noon when we got there. It was to the point where it was actually difficult to bike through it because of the raw amount of tourists wandering all over the fietspad, convinced that it was a pedestrian road. We muddled through the thick crowds as best we could, taking pictures as we went.
We broke free of the crowds and found ourselves travelling through Zaandam, where things turned a bit more industrial. Then we found ourselves back out in the polders and fields again. This repeated as we wound our way through Landsmeer. Finally we started seeing some familiar buildings in the distance, but before we knew it, we were back in Amsterdam. We saw some amazing blue herons along the way, and Jessi was able to get some really awesome close up shots. Suddenly, we were up against the IJ River int he city of Amsterdam, re-entering the city from the North side. We took the free ferry at Buiksloterweg over to Amsterdam Centraal Station, jumped back on the bikes and made our way through the chaos that is Amsterdam to our hotel in the Centrum district. We locked the bikes up, inventoried all the gear we needed to turn in to our outfitter and I grabbed a shower. That was just enough time for the outfitter to arrive and pick up the bikes, which we locked out front. We helped them get everything back over to their truck and left them go on their way. It was a weird feeling not to have a bike. I, personally, felt a bit naked without a trusty bike wheeling at my side or moving underneath me. Returning the bikes, also cemented the harsh truth that tomorrow, we would be flying home back to the states.
Jessi and I walked the city, did our ridiculous tourist bobble shopping, and dropped everything off at the hotel room, before heading out for one last evening at the Hilton Skylounge, which overlooks the city of Amsterdam. Jessi got some amazing pictures of the Amsterdam skyline during sunset, and we sat at the lounge working on the blog and drinking jenever (gin) and tonic. We enjoyed a lovely meal of bitterballen, nachos (always a Jessi favorite), crunchy chicken nuggets, wagyu beef, and frites (fries). It was a lovely way to end the triip. We grabbed some icecream on the way back and took a walk through the super touristy red-light district to find the ice cream place. Tired and ready for bed, we made sure all of our stuff was packed up and ready to go.
It hardly seems real that we are leaving the country tomorrow and that soon we will be home in our own beds. We have met many wonderful people in the Netherlands, and we have experienced some amazing beauty. We take heart in the fact that there are still things left unexplored and that we will someday come back again to explore them. In the meantime, we are excited about seeing friends and family, catching up with everyone, continuing to try to comprehend the tire-fire that is our government right now, and see the cats again! I'm pretty sure they will hate us for a solid month, but it will be nice to see them again too. Thanks again to the magnificent Kristina for being such an awesome caretaker for the cats.
Just a short post tonight. We will have a wrap up post at some point to tie this thing up.
If this is your jump off point, thanks for reading our blog! We hope that it was entertaining to read about us stumbling through another country on bikes. We sure had fun, and we learned a lot of interesting new things. We hope that you learned some interesting things too!
Thoughts from Jessi on bike touring in The Netherlands (for Americans):
So, you're thinking about doing a bike tour in The Netherlands? GO FOR IT! You've probably read the blog my husband & I kept during our twelve-day tour. It was an awesome experience, and we are very lucky that we got a chance to do it. There are some things that we couldn't get to in our daily blog that I wanted to write about separately for the large cadre of biking folks in my life. Here are just some of the thoughts I had, during our nearly two week bike tour! It was one of the best experiences of my life, and I want you to have that same experience, too!
It is really, really easy to bike in the Netherlands! Routes are well labeled and easy to follow. The Dutch are serious about their biking.
1a. Infrastructure, Cities: The biking infrastructure is fantastic and really well marked - ESPECIALLY in big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam & Utrecht. Do a little basic research about the road signage and what it means before you leave. A couple of the signs looked to me like "don't bike here" but they actually meant "don't park your bike here." That's a big difference! The "fietspad" ("Bicycle Path") signs are important and you'll want to keep your eyes peeled for them as they sometimes change sides of the road, so you'll need to use marked crossings to get into the bike lanes at the appropriate times. This is an overview of the most common road signs that apply to cyclists. It's a great starter for what you will encounter on your trip!
It is also really easy to get confused when biking around traffic circles, especially the first few times you do this maneuver. I suggest watching a couple of YouTube videos in advance just to get the hang of it!
1b. Infrastructure, Travelling between cities & towns: The biking infrastructure relies on a comprehensive network of fietspads (dedicated bike lanes), on-highway bike lanes where there are marked lanes but you are directly next to cars, and sharing the road with cars (very occasionally). These difference types are very well marked. This webpage will explain the different types of signs you'll encounter as you move between places. There is a network of bike paths and fietspads that will take you anywhere you want to go.
The thing that blew my mind the most about biking in the Netherlands was how bikes are given priority on very narrow streets! There are roads that are used for two-way car traffic, but on either side of the road is a full-sized bike lane. In the middle of the road is a marked car lane. Cars going both directions share this single lane. When they need to pass a cyclist, the will wait their turn patiently behind you until all oncoming traffic has passed and then enter the car lane to move past traffic. We rode on a number of these types of streets on our journey and I was amazed EVERY TIME. The Dutch drivers were polite and drove at perfectly acceptable distances behind me. They passed me slowly and with care to make sure I didn't go flying off my bike. When it was not safe for them to pass me, they waited patiently, without hoking their horns or otherwise indicating any impatience with my presence. Welcome to an evolved biking culture!!!
1c. Organizing your tour: It is, of course, quite possible to organize and plan your routes by yourself with no input from a tour organizer. The routes are extraordinarily well marked and you will have no trouble getting from place to place with early planning and good maps. However, we STRONGLY suggest hiring a tour operator to help you organize this part of your trip if you are travelling from the US. We promise that you will have a fantastic experience - and having a rented GPS unit in the case that your cell phone battery isn't working, etc. will be life saving. Our tour operator made sure that our routes were scenic, safe, and off-the-beaten path. We visited places that certainly most Americans never see. We saw gorgeous Dutch landscapes on fietspads that we would have never taken ourselves, because the directional signs to our destination pointed the other way. We toured through Dutch National Parks and stopped in towns with scenic castles (surrounded by a moats!). There are a variety of tour operators we reviewed before settling on ours, who was fantastic. We are happy to refer you to ours, but you can certainly find plenty of others!
2. Drivers: Again, Dutch drivers are extraordinarily courteous to cyclists - in a way that we are not accustomed to in the US. There are markers for where bikes have right of way and markers for where drivers have right of way, and you should look up the difference. It is almost always the case that a Dutch driver will yield to a cyclist if he or she can. Still, I recommend reading this page and getting familiar with cycling laws. There is a long Word Document at the end in English with all applicable laws. You may want to considering reading it for further information.
3. Pedestrians: Side note: Because the Dutch have allocated SO MUCH SPACE to dedicated biking lanes in very old cities, the room remaining for pedestrians is limited. If you find yourself out and about in the cities, keep your head on a swivel. Bikes very often have the right of way. You should be watching out for them and ensuring they can safely make their way through the bike lanes. This is fun when YOU are the cyclist! Be sure to afford the same courtesy when you are out on foot exploring.
Conversely, there are some parts of town, where you are NOT allowed to ride your bike. This is usually due to volume of pedestrian traffic in a particular area. Be aware of signage, which prohibits bicycle riding in busy parts of the city. Busy shopping districts and certain alleys in Amsterdam are examples, which we found in our travels. Also, be prepared - sometimes these areas where bikes are not allowed are based on time of day. We had an experience where bikes were allowed down the street early in the morning when we arrived in town but by the time we were leaving in the afternoon, foot traffic had dramatically picked up - and a very kind Dutchman told us that we couldn't ride along the street. Sure enough, the signage prohibiting riding down the block was time sensitive!
1. WATER: For a very developed European country with one of the best and cleanest water supplies in Europe, don't expect to find water easily accessible. You will not find water fountains readily (we saw two places to get water in public outside of Amsterdam). You should plan to carry enough water to sustain you for your entire day without a refill. If you do need a refill, know that you will need to spend up to 4 Euro on a very small bottle of water if you are lucky enough to find a shop that is open AND sells water (not just sodas) in a town you arrive in. You may also be able to use tap water in the toilet (wc) and refill from the sink. Be aware that you will pay at least 50 euro cent to use a restroom (next point). We filled water bottles every morning from the hotel sink and a camel-back on the longer mileage days and made it work. There were a couple of close calls when we both ran out of water 10-15 miles from our destination. BE CAREFUL and carry enough water for your entire journey on the bike. *Also of note: You cannot get tap water for free at a restaurant. No matter the cost of your meal, if you want water, you will pay for bottled water. Often, they will take the lid away with them, so you cannot even reuse the bottle.
2. BATHROOMS: Like in most of the rest of Europe, using a restroom in public in The Netherlands does not seem to viewed as universal public right. Most public toilets charge a fee of a minimum of 50 Euro Cents, up to 1 Euro. Some towns have an easy to find public toilet in a central square or nearby to the "centrum" or downtown area. However, in our experience, most towns in the Netherlands disguise their public WCs and it is often difficult to find a public bathroom. We got into the habit of stopping midday to have a coffee and bathroom break. In some establishments in The Netherlands (but not all), you may use the WC without the fee, if you are also a paying customer. Just be prepared to do everything you need to do in the WC in one visit - take your water bottle with you if you want to top it off in the sink, and bring your chamois cream if you want to re-apply. This way, if you find out that there is a fee for visiting the toilet, you don't have to pay it twice. Be sure to carry change with you in case you need to visit a WC somewhere along your route. On the same note, don't pass up a WC on the trail if you think you might need to stop. It can sometimes be an hour or more before you can find the next establishment that is open with a usable toilet.
3. Laundry: Unlike touring from hotel to hotel in the US, you won't find laundry facilities in The Netherlands. The laundry in Dutch hotels is done by a service, so if you are planning to do laundry on the road, either plan to stay two nights in the same hotel so that you can use their service or do your own "bathtub" laundry like we did. Just be prepared for the lack of hotel laundry facilities!
4. Bike Shops: Because biking is such a part of life in The Netherlands, we had no problems at all finding bike shops along our route. Folks were kind enough to help us with tire pressure checks and even greasing a chain. It was easy to communicate with bike shop staff in English everywhere we went.
