Europe Trip Part IV: More Cycling

Amsterdam had something of a New York vibe - crowded, high energy, filled with funky people.When my family went to Europe in 1974 (our one big family vacation) we were advised not to wear jeans, since we'd stand out like a sore thumb - only American wore jeans. How different things are a mere, um, half century later. Amsterdam was full of people dressed in t-shirts and jeans. A victory for American slovenly style! I would say that no one I saw in Amsterdam would individually have stood out on an American street, but overall the people there were a little more dressed up than what you'd see on an American street. Certainly there were more outfits including artfully draped scarves - on both women and men.

So, if Amsterdam felt like New York, The Hague felt more like DC. More staid, more formal, a seat of government power. When I went to the museum on Tuesday I felt almost underdressed. And just as we got the hang of The Hague, it was time to move on to Belgium.

Wednesday 5/17 (30 mi)

After breakfast we loaded into vans for a two hour shuttle, followed by a fifteen minute ferry ride, which took us to the start of our ride for the day. When we got off the ferry in Breskens we were still in The Netherlands. Our morning ride was yet more lovely pastoral and small town scenery. Lunch found us in the medieval town of Sluis, where we were on our own for lunch. Sluis is an interesting town - historic architecture but a thriving, modern town, including a surprising number of sex shops. I asked the tour guides about this and they explained that Sluis is right on the border, and I guess it must be easier to open an erotic shop in The Netherlands than Belgium, so the border towns on the Dutch side are rich with such shops. 

Along the bike trail

One of the many sex shops in Sluis

Sluis food market

Sluis

Everyone's favorite picture from the trip - outside a clothing store in Sluis

Windmills again

The afternoon ride was pretty uneventful, and we wound up at our hotel in the fairytale perfect town of Bruges. Prior to the trip the only thing I knew about Bruges was that Dr. Evil from Austin Powers was raised there. It is another picture perfect medieval-yet-modern city, sometimes referred to as the "Venice of the North" for its canals. We finished riding early so that we'd have time before dinner for a boat tour through the canals.

Boat tour

Snacks on the boat tour included an enormous box of Belgian chocolates

Our hotel in Bruges for these last two nights of the trip was the Hotel de Tuilerieën, another fine old hotel. Dinner was at a place which specialized in mussels, a local delicacy, but fortunately they also offered a vegetarian option.

Bruges at night

Typical breakfast buffet

Dining room in Bruges

Yet another nicer-than-I-needed hotel room

 My hotel room in Bruges had a big freestanding bathtub, which for some reason immediately put me in mind of the painting The Death of Marat (which, for the record, is in a museum in Brussels). So I had to do it ...

Continue to Part V

Europe Trip Part III: Cycling

Every full day of the cycling trip worked as follows: breakfast available at the hotel at 7 AM (always a fairly lavish buffet). The group would meet at 8:30 for a briefing of the day's activities. From there we'd either start riding directly from the hotel or be shuttled to the start of the ride. Everyone had a bike computer loaded with turn-by-turn directions, so you could ride at your own pace. There'd be a mid-morning rest stop (one of the vans would park along the route and would provide water and snacks - and a chance for riders who didn't want to continue to bail), group lunch at a restaurant, an afternoon rest stop (same story as in the morning), and you'd be done riding by 4 PM. At that point you'd have a chance to relax, and then dinner would be a European duration (2-3 hours) affair at a restaurant. Every night I'd look at my watch at the end of dinner expecting it to be around 8 PM, only to discover it was already 9:30 or 10. Those long dinners, plus the fact that it stays light much later at the north latitudes, would fool me every time.

Monday 5/15 (48 miles)

Today's ride started from the hotel and took us through a national park featuring coastal dunes - the Nationaal Park Zuid Kennermerland - kind of like riding through Cape Henlopen Park in Delaware, but much bigger and wilder. While the scenery was quite beautiful, I didn't take any pictures of the dunes because there was no way I was going to capture large scale nature with my little phone camera. At one point we passed a pack of wild horses - like at Assateague - including one who was standing in the middle of the bike trail. This was the coldest day of the week, with misty and windy weather. The Netherlands is dead flat, but there's a saying, "the mountains of Holland are made of wind", meaning that riding into the constant wind makes it feel like riding up a mountain.  The forecast called for steady rain in the afternoon, so I figured I'd probably quit riding at the lunch stop.

Historic windmills are everywhere!

Cute animals at the lunch break

Our ride took us through tulip country. Alas, we were a little late for tulip season; the fields were mostly bare, with just a few literal late bloomers here and there. Lunch was at De Tuliperij, a tulip farm which also operated a small snack bar and a sizable gift shop. While we ate the owner gave us a little talk about growing tulips. His real product is bulbs, not cut flowers, and it takes several years for a bulb to grow large enough to sell.

The tulip guy gives his talk at lunch

Our trip leader Becca giving instructions

After lunch it wasn't yet raining and my app wasn't showing any imminent precipitation (in advance of the trip I had downloaded the Netherlands-specific Buienradar app) and so some of us made the decision to keep riding. At the afternoon rest stop we made the same calculation and once again decided to keep riding. Not everyone kept riding, and in the end just four of us (retired teacher Scott, hardcore cycling cardiologist Sarah, me, plus an eBiker - who didn't count) rode the full 48 miles from the previous night's hotel to the Hotel des Indes in The Hague.

The Hotel des Indes has an interesting history. Built in 1858 as a city palace of some nobleman, during WW II the hotel served as the headquarters for the occupying Nazi forces, while at the same time the staff was hiding a small group of Jewish refugees (who all survived!) in the pigeon coops on the roof of the hotel. Everything in Europe has a complex history.

My fancypants room at Hotel des Indes

My room number in The Hauge. Too bad I didn't have this room number in Amsterdam

Dinner was at Les Basaliek, a short walk from the hotel. I had the aubergine with miso cream appetizer and cod as a main dish. The dessert had a fancy name, but was in effect strawberries and marshmallow fluff over crumbled graham crackers.

Remember the crazy couple from Sunday night, who over dinner told us that time isn't real? Well, by chance I wound up sitting with them again at Les Basaliek, and things got even weirder. As soon as they referred to the COVID pandemic as the "scamdemic” I buckled in for a wild ride. They went on about how their stupid governor Newsom closed everything for way too long, and how it’s obvious that this was a genetically engineered virus which escaped from the Wuhan lab’s “gain of function” research, because of the “dual arginines”. This led to a heated discussion with fellow traveler Ellen, who was seated at the table as well. I tried a couple of times to very obviously change the subject, since I didn't really want to be having this argument at dinner while on vacation - to no avail. The couple kept saying that you have to learn to think like a scientist and you have to ignore the media and read books so you understand what’s going on - a variant of the “do your own research” line you commonly hear from conspiracy theorists as a rationale for dismissing expert opinion in favor of their own cockamamie theories. Anyway, when I got back to my room I looked up the dual arginine theory and while it had actually been spread in no less of a publication than The Wall Street Journal, it’s in fact a debunked conspiracy theory. Basically it’s saying that this dual arginine structure in the virus is very rare in nature (our dinner friends had exaggerated and said it's never found in nature) and so anything which has it must be engineered. But, of course, very rare occurrences do happen, so the rarity of the dual arginine structure in fact proves nothing. 

Tuesday 5/16 (17 miles)

Tuesday we were shuttled from the hotel to Kinderdijk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Rotterdam which contains nineteen historic 18th century windmills. The setting is beautiful and the windmills are striking. I never really considered why The Netherlands has so many windmills. Being "mills", I just assumed that they were used for grinding grain - or some such purpose. It turns out that the historic windmills are primarily water pumps and served to constantly pump out the ever-leaky Netherlands. About a third of the Netherlands is reclaimed land which sits at or below sea level, and the country has to constantly be pumped out to avoid sinking back into the ocean. This need continues today, but the pumping is accomplished by more modern devices - which look like giant screws - rather than windmills, though apparently some of the old windmills are kept in working order as backups for the modern systems.

At Kinderdijk we got to walk around the windmills and even see the inside of one (people lived in them!). 

Our trip leaders Becca and Sean. For some reason, Tuesday was glitter day

All glittered up

A better look at my glitter

Pre-ride briefing

Kinderdijk scenery

Windmills at Kinderdijk

Residence inside the windmill

Living space inside the windmill

Most days, the morning pit stop was at a business or public park where there was bathroom access, but I guess there wasn't any appropriate commercial establishment at the right spot on Tuesday's route. Instead, they had contracted with some old dude named Martin who allowed us to take a break (and use the facilities) at his farmhouse - though it wasn’t clear to me whether that tiny building was his actual dwelling, because it was just one of a cluster of buildings on the property. In fact, he invited a few of us into one of the other buildings. When I walked in he was describing to (retired teachers) Scott and Paula how he had been a sailor and wound up in Jerusalem (he used the Hebrew pronunciation, “Yerushalayim”) during the Six Day War and worked on a kibbutz, and he showed off the Israeli Defense Force hat he still had as a souvenir. It’s not 100% clear to me if the guy was Jewish. I thought maybe he was a Jewish WW II survivor, but when I asked him in Yiddish if he spoke Yiddish, he didn’t understand, and his English wasn't great so I couldn't really get the answers to my questions from him. But he did know “shalom”! I asked the other people who had been part of this conversation, but no one had an answer as to how his Israeli past had come up as a conversation topic. About ten minutes before getting to Martin's we had passed a house flying an Israeli flag, so I also momentarily speculated that maybe this was an area which was home to Dutch Jews. But no. I think he was just a Dutch sailor who just wound up in Israel at a key moment in history.

Martin is also an accordionist!

Martin, his dog, and some sheep

It's a mystery as to why this house flying an Israeli flag.

We rode on. After a loop through the historic market square of Gouda (pronounced “Howda”, it turns out), we stopped for lunch in a converted “Captain’s house” - apparently where ship captains would go while their ships were in port. They had a nice vegetarian option for lunch - tomato soup, bread, cheese, babaganoush, pickled beets, a tiny slice of quiche, and white asparagus. Then they gave us each a shot of some sort of local liquor.

The group eats lunch at the "Captain's House"

Lunch

After lunch, 23 of the 25 of us opted to go back to The Hague, so we could have a chance to go to museums, explore, etc. (only the true hardcores Sarah and Scott rode on). After a shower and a quick nap I visited the Mauritshaus Museum, full of Rembrandts, Vermeers, and other Dutch Art. Not a huge museum, but a good one. The highlights of the museum include Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson. I rode only 17 miles on Tuesday, but in trade got time for sightseeing.

That night was dinner on your own. Not wanting another three hour dinner, I declined invitations from folks in the group and had dinner by myself at a Neapolitan pizza place. Vegetable pizza and a big ol’ Peroni beer - perfect.

The Hague

Pieter Codde's "Portrait of a Married Couple". Despite having been painted in 1634, this couple seems very modern to me. I don't know why, but I really liked this one.

Guy with a cubic zirconia earring with a Girl with a Pearl Earring

Dutch pizza

Tuesday I was also riding by myself a lot, so I felt free to stop for pictures. Here's some more Dutch scenery:

Detail from a bar in Gouda.

Gouda town square

Continue to Part IV

Europe Trip Part II: The bike tour begins

Sunday my trip completely switched gears, as I went from on-my-own, figuring everything out seat-of-the-pants, to being on a tour where everything was taken care of. The last thing I had to figure out independently was how to get myself to our meeting point, outside the Starbucks at my old haunt Sloterdijk Station. I got there with plenty of time to spare and those of us there early grabbed a big table in Starbucks, where we were joined by other trip participants as they trickled in. The first people I met were two women traveling sort of together. They were individual travelers who had met on a previous Backroads trip and had decided to do this one together. They both looked to be my age or maybe a little older, which immediately assuaged one of my fears: that I was going to be the slow old guy amongst a group of hardcore cyclists, much as Valerie’s cousin Paul had been the old guy among a much younger group on a long-ago trip to Belize (my introduction to active/adventure travel). Tannie (a feisty woman from Chambersburg, PA) told me right up front that she was 69 years old, and I found out somewhere along the way that Ellen (semi-retired and recently divorced, from Lewes, DE) was 64. Those two became sort of my buds for the trip, since we were among the minority of trip participants who weren’t traveling with some sort of partner or family members. Next to show up was a group of six women - obviously a family. They turned out to be three sisters in my general age range, originally from Peru but long-time residents of Miami, their slightly older cousin, and one of the sisters’ two 20-something daughters. We met one of our trip leaders, Becca, who checked people off on her checklist as they showed up and collected everyone’s food allergies and restrictions. When I overheard one of the three sisters say that her food restrictions include pork or shellfish, it confirmed what I had already suspected, that the group of six was Jewish. I commented to her that I usually just say “vegetarian” rather than spell out the intricacies of kosher rules, thereby exchanging gang signs so that we knew each other were Jewish. It turns out Ellen is Jewish too, but I didn’t find this out until much later. As other participants arrived I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only guy on the trip, though roughly three quarters of the group of 25 were female, and I was something of a curiosity for being a married guy traveling alone (apparently it’s more common for wives to travel without their husbands - like the Real Jewish Peruvian Housewives of Miami were doing - than for husbands to travel without their wives).

We were ushered onto a bus, which shuttled us to Edam - the first of several cheese towns on our itinerary. Along the way Becca and the other American trip leader, Sean, gave us an overview of how our days would go, and what we’d be doing that day.

At Edam we were issued our bikes, and we met the other two members of our Backroads team, Babette and Nicky, who are both Dutch. While Becca and Sean rode with the group, Babette and Nicky handled the support logistics: driving the support vans, setting up food at rest stops, and so on. As they issued bikes I discovered that only two of us had opted for drop bar "performance" road bikes; the rest of the group was split between easy-riding flat bar hybrids and eBikes. Seeing that mix of bike selections further erased any anxieties I had about keeping up with the group. The other road bike rider was a young woman named Sarah who was a recent MD/PhD taking a quick break before starting a fellowship in cardiology. Another anxiety of mine assuaged - our group had an in-house cardiologist! Sarah was outlier to the group as well, being both another solo traveler and at 30 the only Millennial outside of the Peruvian daughters. She was the most powerful rider of the group (not surprising, being half as old as the rest of us!) and usually jumped out and rode ahead of the pack every day. She’s a little intense, but always in a positive way. A thin, high energy little woman, she reminded me of a little of a younger version of Valerie’s friend Laura, but with a very positive attitude.

Backroads provides a couple of support vans throughout the trip, so every day you have the option of riding the whole route or bailing out at one of the rest stops or lunch and shuttling the rest of the way by van. There’s an app which provides information about each day’s rides and routes, and each bike is equipped with a Wahoo GPS device loaded with turn-by-turn directions for the day’s rides. Since you’re following the GPS, not the leader, you can ride at your own pace - stop to take a picture if you want, take a break, explore a side road, whatever. Very cool.

One of the Backroads support vans

Another surprise - a Jewish cemetery in Edam

The long ride for the day was Edam to our lodging, the Hotel Duin en Kruidberg, about 30 miles. Along the way we got acquainted with our bikes (the road bikes had electronic Shimano Di2 shifting - also very cool), got our first taste of the beauty of the Dutch countryside as well as how to navigate the extensive bike path system, and saw our first windmills. Our lunch break was a restaurant waterfront at Twiske Lake. The Netherlands, being partially below sea level, has a lot of waterfront: lakes, canals, rivers, and oceans. I think just about everywhere in the country is waterfront. Nice weather, and a nice first ride.

Typical scenery

First windmill sighting!

One of several little ferries along this ride

More Dutch countryside

When I rode up to the hotel I laughed out loud. I had gone from staying in a broom closet in Amsterdam to Downton F’in Abbey. The Hotel Landgoed Duin & Kruidberg is an elegant old country estate, and I felt silly walking in wearing my goofy bike clothes. I guess it’s the same as walking into the manor house wearing one’s muddy equestrian garb would have been in the old days.

The Hotel Landgoed Duin & Kruidberg

My room at the Duin & Kruidberg

After settling in we met out on the patio for a welcome cocktail. In retrospect, this was a strangely stiff gathering - everyone was a little formal and reserved, whereas after a day or so together we were all much more relaxed. In part, I think I just happened by chance to speak first with some of the more reserved people on the trip. I met Michael, a retired high-powered attorney and law professor of some sort and his wife. Michael turned out to be really nice once you got to know him, but he’s quiet, which initially I misinterpreted as standoffish. His wife radiates a little more of an Upper East Side vibe - so I misread them as being a little snooty. I also talked with a couple from Rhode Island. She is an internist; He designs sonars for a living, so he and I had some things to talk about!. They had left their two young children home with the grandparents and amazingly, several days into the trip when I asked them how the kids were doing they said they didn’t know - that their (and the grandparents’) philosophy is out sight, out of mind, so they hadn’t spoken directly with the kids since they’d left. They were very nice and were among the stronger non-eBike riders, so I hung with them while riding a few times over the course of the week.

Over dinner, things got a little weird. The meal itself was fine, if striving a little too hard to be fancy. I had the white asparagus appetizer, then the vegetarian main dish was in effect a gussied up veggie burger on a plate with artistically arranged vegetables. Dessert was lychee nut custard and coconut cake with lychee nut ice cream on a rosewater emulsion base - all presented as little blobs which looked like maybe food from Star Trek.

The weird part wasn't the food, which was actually OK. Rather one of the couples at my table was a little, umm, odd. The woman of the couple had had perhaps a bit too much to drink, and was going on about her view of the differences between men and women: how men are hunters vs. women being gatherers, and how that affects all sorts of behavior, such as the ability to navigate, or knowing about flowers. She somehow segued from that into how time isn’t real, and ultimately wound up expressing her discomfort with the number of Asians and Mexicans in the area where they live in California. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt - figuring maybe her conversation was influenced by jet lag and alcohol - but she definitely had too many toes over the line into racism towards the end of her monologue. European dinners are long (our dinners were typically 2-3 hours); by the end this one started to feel very long.

Continue to Part III