Day 5 - It Begins!

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!