by Cassie, November 10th, 2009 | No Comments
Friday, September 11, 2009
Delft is a really neat small city (population 100,000). It feels like a mini-Amsterdam with neat, old buildings along canals, minus the chaos of Amsterdam. When you ride your bike in the Netherlands, you feel like you are royalty. Delft had a guarded bike parking area! We left our bikes there, and we were free to wander around Delft without worrying about the bikes.
Submerged bike in canal
The highlight of our day was climbing the tower of the Niewe Kerk (New Church). The tower is 108.75 meters tall and 356 steps to climb to the top. The tower is the second highest church tower in the Netherlands after the church tower in Utrecht. We were able to go to the top of the tower by ourselves without a guide, which would have never been possible in the US. The climb to the top was up a narrow, steep, winding staircase. It was the same staircase for going up and down, and there was not much room to pass people coming from the other direction. They allow 60 people to climb the tower at the same time, which seems unimaginable in such tight quarters. We only passed two couples on the way up the tower, and it was a tight squeeze. The view from the top of the tower was amazing! You could see the big cities of Den Haag and Rotterdam. The top of the tower was a little scary because there was only a low railing preventing you from going over the edge, and it was a long way to the bottom of the tower.
Niewe Kerk
View from tower of Niewe Kerk with view of Oude Kerk
Looking straight down from Niewe Kerk tower - it's a long way down!
View from tower of Niewe Kerk looking across the main square to the Stadhuis
The Niewe Kerk is a Protestant church, so it is plainly decorated inside. It used to be Catholic church, but it was stripped of all its decorations during the Reformation. The church is also the burial site for most of the royal family, including William of Orange. During the Eighty Years War against the Spanish, William of Orange set up his residence in defensible Delft, but he was assassinated in 1584. Since the royal family’s traditional burial place was overtaken by the Spanish at that time, William of Orange was buried in Delft instead.
Mausoleum for William of Orange in Niewe Kerk
Delft has had a couple serious disasters that damaged both the Niewe Kerk and the Oude Kerk. First, a huge fire wiped out most of the city. It is believed that lightning struck the tower of Niewe Kerk, and then the fire spread to the rest of the city. Once they had rebuilt the church and replaced all the stain glass windows, there was a huge gun powder explosion in 1654 that blew out all the stained glass windows and damaged both churches. As a result, some parts of the church are relatively new. The stained glass windows were not replaced until the 1900s.
You cannot climb the tower of the Oude Kerk because it is leaning almost two meters off center! If you view the Oude Kerk from one of the bridges over a canal, it really looks like the church tower could topple over at any time. The tower has a big bell in it, but they only ring it on special occasions because the vibrations from ringing the bell could cause damage to the tower.
Leaning tower of Oude Kerk
Our only disappointment was visiting the Royal Delftware factory. Delft is known for their beautiful blue-painted pottery, so we wanted to see it made. However, it was really expensive to tour the factory, and while we were there, nothing was going on. It was Friday afternoon, and it looked like everyone had already gone home for the day. The big tour buses were parked outside the factory, so we learned a lesson that places with the big tour bus crowds should be avoided unless it is somewhere that we really want to visit.
by Cassie, November 10th, 2009 | No Comments
Thursday, September 10, 2009
We rode down the North Sea coast through the sand dunes and beach resort towns. It was a beautiful, sunny day with an awesome tailwind. We met other people that were riding up the coast against the wind. They were working really hard, and we were barely pedaling.
Riding through the sand dunes
We saw some people on the beach, but Zaandvort and the other beach resort towns must be completely packed on nice summer days. There was a sign before the beach parking lots that listed how many parking spots were still available, and they had over 4,600 spots! There was also a race track by Zaandvoort, which surprised me. I thought that auto racing was mostly a “sport” for the United States, but it appears to be an international “sport”. We also rode by a sand sculpture contest in one of the towns, and all the sand sculptures had a Disney theme.
Sand Sculpture Competition: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
After leaving the coast, we rode through the big city of Den Haag, and we got completely lost. The bike routes are well-marked until you get into the city when you really need signs to point the way, and it becomes harder to find the bike route. We finally found our way again, and we were glad to get out of Den Haag. We were thinking of taking a side trip to Rotterdam, which our bike book called the “beast”. However, after riding through Den Haag, we had no inclination to ride through an ever bigger city. We rode on to Delft and camped at a campground outside the city. We rode through Delft on the way to city, and it was a such a neat-looking place that we decided to spend the next day exploring the city.
by Cassie, November 10th, 2009 | No Comments
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Since we had a short day of riding today, we did a big loop around Recreatiegebied Spaarmwoude. As we were riding along, we happened upon a ruined castle. It was our first castle of our Europe bike tour! Neither one of us had been in a real castle before, so it was exciting to take a tour of it. We climbed to the top of the ramparts and saw the view that the castle defenders would have had watching for invaders. This was the oldest castle ruins in the Netherlands, built originally in about 1280. It was completely destroyed twice. The first time it was destroyed, it was rebuilt on the same foundation. The Spaniards destroyed it the second time, and it was abandoned afterwards. The castle is near the sand dunes, so it was buried beneath the sand until it was discovered in the 1800s and restored by the Netherlands government.
Castle Ruins
View from the top of the castle
We rode into Haarlem to the Grote Markt and did the Rick Steves experience. We got the raw herring sandwich from the herring stand on the main square. I was not expecting to like the raw herring, but it was surprisingly good. During our time in the Netherlands, we ate several raw herring sandwiches.
Haarlem Cathedral
Haarlem herring stand
After a short ride from Haarlem, we made it to the coast of the North Sea! It was really windy on the coast, and there were tons of kite boarders, windsurfers, and surfers out on the water.
Cassie triumphant at North Sea coast
Kite boarders
We camped in sand dunes, and the campground was enormous! The campground had almost 900 campsites, and it was completely packed with people!
Sunset over the dunes by our campsite
by Cassie, November 9th, 2009 | No Comments
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
We spent the morning walking around Edam taking care of some errands. Edam was another cute Dutch town with canals running through it. We found the VVV (tourist office), and we managed to find the bike maps we needed. The tourist office in Amsterdam was out of stock of the bike maps we needed, so we were only able to get a map that would get us a little past Edam. The little tourist office in Edam was better stocked with maps than the tourist office in Amsterdam. The Netherlands has the best method of navigating the bike routes. All the intersections have a number, and each intersection has signs pointing the direction to the next numbered intersection. Instead of following signs to a specific town, you go from 12 to 15 to 14 and so on. It was really easy to figure out which direction you needed to go.
Edam
We rode out of Edam and had an enjoyable ride along a dike by a canal through the Dutch countryside. Then, we left the countryside and entered an industrial area by Wormer. There was a huge chocolate factory there, and the whole area smelled like cocoa beans! We left the industrial area and rode through Zaan Schans, where there were lots of windmills. We toured one of the windmills that was being used as a sawmill. It was really neat to look inside a working windmill. We wished we would have had more time to spend in Zaan Schans, but it was getting late. We still had many kilometers to cover to reach our destination.
Zaanse Schans windmill
Inside sawmill at Zaan Schans
We took our first ferry across the big canal by Zaandam. It was awesome because bikes got to ride the ferry for free!
Cassie on our first ferry
We were aiming for Haarlem today, but we did not make it to Haarlem since we had so many errands to do today. Fortunately, there are campground everywhere in the Netherlands, so it was not a problem to find someplace else to stop for the night. In addition to getting bike maps, spare inner tubes, patches, and groceries, we also bought a camp stove. We could not bring our camp stove on the plane, so we had to buy a camp stove in Europe. It is a small stove that runs on canisters of gas, so we thought we could get it back home with us on the plane. It was exciting to have a camp stove and cook our first hot meal of the trip! We camped in a recreation area just on the other side of the canal. The campground was more like a resort! It had a restaurant, a snack shop, and a swimming pool. The campground was also on the approach path for the planes coming into the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. Even though we were camped in the middle of the forest, we could hear planes all night long!
After we had unpatched inner tubes on my bike, our second day of riding went smoothly. It encouraged us that we could really make it all the way to Budapest!
by Cassie, November 9th, 2009 | No Comments
Monday, September 7, 2009
Everything seemed to be ready to go for the start of our bike tour when we realized that the back tire on my bike was flat again! We had just changed a flat on the same tire the night before. We changed the tire, but afterwards, we could hear the air leaking out of it. We changed the tire again and put on our second and last spare inner tube. The tire seemed to be holding air, so we crossed our fingers and headed out on our bikes.
Heading off our bike tour of Europe!
Before even leaving the city of Amsterdam, we came across our first windmill in the Netherlands!
Windmill on the outskirts of Amsterdam
We had just gotten out of the city when I realized the back tire was flat yet again! This was a problem that plagued us for the entire day. I got a total of five flat tires on our first day of riding. We finally realized that patches we were using on the tires would not hold with all the weight on the bike. We were using the stick-on patches, and normally, they work fine. The following day, we found a bike shop and bought some extra spare inner tubes and the glue-on patches.
Despite the challenges with the bike, we enjoyed the ride. The Dutch countryside is beautiful! We rode along a dike through farms with pastures for sheep and cows.
Dutch countryside
Sheep!
We also rode through cute, small Dutch towns. And. of course, there were lots of windmills, both modern and old-fashioned.
Cute Dutch town
We were worried about making it to Edam without proper patches for my back tire, so we tried to stop at the first campground on the map in Volendam. We got to the campground, but it was a campground only for caravans. We talked to a nice couple from Scotland at the campground, and they said there was a big festival going in and the streets were full of drunk people. On our way to Edam, the bike route went right through the middle of the festival. The Scottish couple were not kidding about the drunk people! The streets looked like a scene of a wild party with tons of trash strewn all over the streets. The streets were so full of people that it was impossible to try to ride through it. We managed to find our way around the festival, but we lost the bike route on the way. We stopped to look at the map when a really nice man stopped to help us. He actually rode ahead of us to show us the way to Edam! Fortunately, my bike made it to the campground in Edam. However, when we returned to our bikes after paying for camping, the back tire was flat yet again. It was a rocky start to our bike tour, and it made us doubt that we would make it all the way to Budapest.
by Cassie, November 9th, 2009 | No Comments
For those that are interested, I am going to provide detailed entries of our bike tour through Europe. So, stay tuned!
by Cassie, November 4th, 2009 | 1 Comment
After a marathon 20 hours of traveling, we made it home from Budapest! We got to the Minneapolis airport, and we were so close to Des Moines. However, we had a five-hour layover before the flight to Des Moines. We could have driven in the time we spent waiting for the flight! But, we made it, and our bikes survived the trip as well.
Our bike tour in Europe was an incredible experience. We especially enjoyed the last part of our trip in Eastern Europe. It was a whole different experience from Western Europe with the abandoned border checkpoints and the huge Soviet concrete block apartments. Even though we didn’t speak any Hungarian or Slovakian, everyone was incredibly friendly. When we stopped to look at the map, there always seemed to be someone that came over to help us out. The night before we arrived in Budapest, we stayed in a pension with a lovely, old couple that were so hospitable. The man spoke a little English, so we were able to talk with him a little bit. When we arrived, he offered us some cognac and insisted we each take an apple for “vitamin”. In the morning, they cooked us an enormous breakfast and helped us get our bags loaded on our bikes.
It feels so strange to be back in the United States with everyone speaking English. We do not have to find a place to sleep every night. For the first time in two months, I am wearing a different set of clothes! Being home seems like such a luxury after two months on the road!
I have uploaded all the remaining photos from our trip, so check them out:
