Sunday 28th August - Thursday 1st September 2011
We had read in the Lonely Planet that there was a cool ride on some dyke roads past windmills just south of Alkmaar so we headed out in that direction on Sunday morning. The ride was really nice past canals and old and new windmills. We stopped at a windmill museum and saw an old one in action - very cool.
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| Windmill |
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| Lawrie next to the top gears |
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| Windmill from the other side |
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| Dutch farmland and windmill |
Unfortunately, you don't put windmills where there isn't any wind, so we spent the rest of the day riding into a headwind, which was really tough. We made it into Haarlem around 5pm and set up camp.
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| Kitty and bike on another ferry |
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| Kitty being overtaken by a scooter |
It was raining on Monday, so we had a slow start to the day, but it didn't matter too much because being a Monday, the museums were all closed anyway. We had lunch in town, wandered around for a bit, Lawrie bought some new jeans, bought groceries and went back to camp. We had our dinner cooked for us by a couple of French girls we met the night before and we went out to a cool bar that used to be a fish shop. We sat in a room in the back that had been covered in carved leather - very cool.
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| Drinks |
On Tuesday we caught the train into Amsterdam (we couldn't buy tickets because the machine wouldn't accept cash). We walked down to the Dam, stopping on the way to get waffles and poffertjes. We went to the house where Anne Frank and her family were hidden in WWII. It was a very emotional experience. We spent the afternoon walking around the red light district.
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| Very Dutch - canal and bike |
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The older houses don't have very deep foundations and, being
built on sandy soil, have gone a bit wonky over time |
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| The narrowest house in Amsterdam - 2.02m wide |
On Wednesday we went back into Amsterdam and went to the Rijksmuseum, which was okay, but both of us thought the Mauritshuis in Den Haag was better. We went to the Heineken Experience in the afternoon, which was a bit of fun but not really worth the €16 per person.
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| Bike parking outside Amsterdam Centraal |
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| Brew kettles in the Heineken museum |
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| Lawrie and the inside of one of the kettles |
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| I am the beer |
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