After our long ski weekend in Zermatt, Switzerland, we popped over to the Netherlands to embark on our planned 3-day biking trip.
Firstly, before you get confused, Holland is not the same as Netherlands. The Netherlands is the whole country; Holland is comprised of two of the 12 provinces in Netherlands. So there.
Our adventure seemed pretty ambitious when we booked it, and as we got closer, Dale became more and more nervous, having little experience with biking, much less biking for over 40km a day for 3 days in a row!
Tulip Cycling (www.tulipcycling.com) is the outfit we booked. They were wonderful and I highly recommend doing this and using them. We landed in Amsterdam and took an uber to the nearby city of Utrecht, where our tour began. Pieter (not to be confused with his partner Peter) met us at our hotel, which they had booked for us. He gave us all of our equipment and took the time to explain everything – bikes, bags for carrying stuff, a garmin gps, maps for following along and a commitment to meet us each afternoon with our luggage transported to the next hotel.
We biked first from Utrecht to Gouda (ya, like the cheese), stayed overnight and then biked from Gouda to Leiden. The next morning we biked from Leiden up to the Keukenhof gardens to see their amazing display of flowers, then out along the beach and up to Zanvoort before cycling in to Haarlem (not to be confused at all with Harlem) for our finish. Peter (not Pieter) met us at the Haarlem train station, collected all his equipment and we caught a train to Amsterdam and met a good friend for dinner and wine for our last night.
Point #1 – The Netherlands is beautiful. We cycled through little villages, farms, flower farms, protected lands, past the dunes by the ocean. We saw a lot of babies, since it was April – lamb, calves, chickens, and many more sheep and lambs than we could count. The scenery is gorgeous and the little villages offered opportunities to stop for a tea or lunch or other.
Point #2 – The Netherlands is flat! This is a huge point, especially for those inexperienced or unsure. The biking is easy. The worst you can get is wind or rain. We were lucky and avoided rain, but did have the wind from time to time. Big deal, just keep pedaling.
This was a lot of fun and we handled 40k each day pretty easily. I would guess that we did about 5 hours of biking each day. This allowed for a leisurely breakfast at around 8am, on the bikes at 9 or even 10 and we’d arrive at the next town by 3 easily. Time for a rest, a walk and a nice dinner before bed.
The towns (are they really cities?) are good fun. Our favorite was Gouda, though we missed the big cheese festival by a week or so. It is charming and nice to walk around. Leiden is a university town, so a little bit busier, but we made do at a nice little wine bar. Haarlem is really pretty (yes, Haarlem), and Amsterdam is of course the big city, but one that we really enjoy.
Okay enough pontificating. Just logging and blogging this trip cuz it was a winner. I would do it again.
Off to London to visit our old home for a week.
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