We picked up our rental car Friday night, as well as a new bike rack, and by 10am on Saturday morning, were on our way to The Netherlands. Düsseldorf is approximately 91 km from the Germany/Netherlands border and a trip to Amsterdam – the first stop of the weekend – is less than two and a half hours away. We arrived in Amsterdam and after a stressful hour long battle through traffic and confusing streets, finally got the car parked in a garage that would accept credit cards. Oh, and we also discovered that the bike rack makes the car/rack/bikes combo a little too tall for the garage entrance… the hard way. Thankfully the only casualty was the bell flying off one of our bikes.
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Once on bikes, navigating the city of Amsterdam was a dream. It truly is the world’s most bike-friendly city – with bikes outnumbering cars seemingly 100 to 1 everywhere we went. Amsterdam is also connected by a spider web of canals, which we also took advantage of by taking a two hour paddle boat tour of the city. Being May in Holland, the flower market was packed, but was well worth the trip – except for the fact that I (Erik) was getting over a cold that managed to explode into allergies over the course of the trip. Lots of sneezing, and a constantly running nose. We did a bit of shopping, checked out a couple of the touristy sites, ate a good dinner at a Brazilian steak house, and overall really enjoyed our time spent in Amsterdam. I’d have to say that it’s been my favorite city in Europe so far – just so laid back, friendly, english-speaking, bike-friendly, boats and water everywhere… pretty much perfect in my opinion. Yes, for those that are curious, we did take a quick stroll through the red light district before leaving that night. It was pretty much as sleazy as what we had expected, but it still managed to feel safe and the boundaries were well marked so it was easy to avoid once we decided to leave. Our hotel out by the airport was difficult to find, but very nice.
The next morning we set out toward Rotterdam, deciding that we would try to stop in a couple of other towns along the way. Laura had found a brochure for a tourist trap/theme park in The Hague that featured miniaturized versions of many of Holland’s famous sites. Why not? Let’s give it a shot. Well, apparently we didn’t get the memo that practically the entire population of Holland would be in The Hague that weekend, as the temperature was hovering in the 80′s, it was a holiday weekend, and the city happens to have one of the most popular beaches in the country. Sounds neat, until you try to find parking. An hour later, we finally found a spot to park and rode our bikes down to the beach. I haven’t EVER seen a beach that crowded in my life, and that includes many trips to Myrtle Beach and spring break in Florida. It was insane. After a little walking in the sand, picking up seashells, and a lunch of fish and chips (we passed on the pickled herring), we headed off to find the Madurodum (miniature themepark). It was really well done, and interesting for the most part, but by the second hour of our tour, I was tiring of taking pictures, we were both getting very hot and thirsty, and it was getting time we needed to head to Rotterdam. Off we go. The trip from The Hague to Rotterdam was only 30 minutes or so and we were soon parked in front of our hotel, which had a beautiful view of the river. As for the inside of the hotel… it was, uh, interesting. This was our first experience with older European hotels in densely populated cities. To sum it up, we had a room with two tiny twin beds, a sink in the room, toilets down one hall, and a shower room down the other. Quite a shocker, compared to the plush modern hotel we stayed in the night before. Oh well, ‘when in Rome,’ right? After freshening up, we again hopped on our bikes (notice a trend here?) and rode off to find dinner, find an internet connection to make Mothers’ Day phone/webcam calls, and grab some dinner. We finally ended up making our calls from a picnic table outside of a McDonald’s… not many other options near 9pm on a Sunday night. Later that night Laura patiently allowed me to practice my photography some more (yeah, I’m the dork setting up a tripod all over town) and we got a really nice picture of us along the riverfront. We were thankfully quite tired when we returned to our unairconditioned room and got to sleep to the sounds of boats and trolleys rumbling past.
Monday was a holiday in Europe, so we were able to head back toward Düsseldorf at a leisurely pace. We tried stopping in Gouda, thinking ‘Hey, they make cheese there… it ought to be interesting.’ Not so much… nice little town, but everything was closed for the holiday and we never even saw one reference to cheese. Utrecht proved to be a much more interesting stop, and we spent a good bit of the morning, lunch, and afternoon riding around it’s narrow streets, over the canals, and gawking at cathedrals, windmills, and the other sights. As always, pictures of the trip are online in the gallery section of the site (link). I shot nearly 300 pictures, and really didn’t feel like tossing any more than I already had, so I apologize if it’s a lot to click through. We’re already planning a return trip to Holland some long weekend in the future – this time without a car, just trains and bikes. But first we’ve got to plan our Rome and (maybe) Croatia trip.
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