20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure Day 3: Hoek van Holland to Amsterdam

 

Day 3! The day the bike part of our trip really for real began!


I had gotten it in my head that the ferry arrived in Hoek van Holland around 9 or 9:45am, and that's when we'd start our journey to Amsterdam. So I was quite surprised when, at 5:30am, the ferry suddenly started yelling at us to get ready to disembark! I mean, not to disembark immediately at 5:30am, but to start getting ready. Fortunately we were both sleeping fitfully, so we were able to jump up and go down to the breakfast buffet.

We fully expected to have rainy days on our trip, but according to our window, we'd start with a rainy day 1!


I felt like we got to the restaurant quickly, ate efficiently, packed up the few things we'd unpacked without dawdling, but somehow by the time we took the elevator down to the car-level.. every car was gone. I mean, this was great news for us, because we didn't have to wait at all and didn't have to deal with all the cars and giant trucks that had been parked there, but seriously, it was weird.

 

Bike still there! Everyone else gone. Time to begin this journey!


We rode out into the rain, got through Customs without any issue (a new stamp for the passport!), and our journey began!


 

Welcome to the Netherlands!


And then we immediately pulled off into a parking lot to plug in our route for the day into Matt's phone. Destination: Amsterdam!


Straight out of the ferry port parking lot, we got on a bike path. I was like "Wow, a bike path right here! Already!" Little did I know.. that's just how the Netherlands work. Anywhere you want to go, there's a bike path. It was truly, truly, truly amazing and wonderful.


 

Bike path in Dutch is Fietspad, and every time I saw the word, I'd go "fietspad!" because it made me so happy that they were so prolific.

The first few miles were along the coast, but also rainy and overcast, so we really never got a great view of the water. I actually felt a little overwhelmed in the first few miles. We were really doing this. And 3 weeks is a long time. And Stockholm was very far away. And my legs felt cold and out of shape and holy crap what were we thinking?

 

There's the beach down there, but it's really too rainy and misty to see it well. We didn't get any closer, though once we had to ride through the sand to avoid a random police vehicle that parked on the fietspad.


But then! Then there were sheep! Just right there! And so fuzzy!

 

Friends!


 

Sheepbutt!


And then I obviously knew I was going to be okay.

 

Fietspad. Just in the middle of nowhere.


It continued to sprinkle for a while, but then died off and it was just overcast as we rolled into The Hague.

 

The Hague


It was too early to eat lunch when we got to The Hague, but we did stop for a bit of touristing at Binnenhof. "It houses the meeting place of both houses of the States General of the Netherlands, as well as the Ministry of General Affairs and the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands." Thank you, wikipedia. Mostly, though, it's really beautiful.

 

Goose tried to steal my bike. Also it's evidently still foggy here, since you can't see the tops of the buildings in the background.


Then back onto the fietspad, Amsterdam-bound.

 

This picture doesn't even do the colors through this part justice.


We stopped for lunch in a random little town roughly halfway there.

 

The European crows are grey and black instead of just solid black!


Then back on the fietspad for our last push to Amsterdam!

 

Even here, on this tiny road, there's dedicated bike path in both directions.

 

Baby sheep!

 

Cows which were so perfect I thought they might be some sort of movie set!

 

Possibly our first windmill! (Definitely the first easily photographed one. Sometimes windmills were in inconvenient-to-photograph places.)

When we were shopping for activities to do in the major cities we would be visiting, ones where we'd be spending more than just one night, I had discovered Amsterdamse Bose, or Amsterdam Forest. It looked beautiful, and I like nature and forests, so I requested that be added to our list. Turns out it's on the south end of Amsterdam, and we'd be riding right past it on the way in, so we decided to ride through on our way in!

 

Certainly not peeing in the woods. (Don't bother looking, it's just a picture of the bike.)


And it was even more beautiful than advertised. AND the sun had finally come out. And it had warmed up so we could take off jackets. It was just.. it was just good.

 

Oops, caught Matt hydrating.


As we neared the other end of the bos, Matt sent a message to our airbnb host for the night, letting her know we were headed that way. Except he couldn't get any signal out there.


 

Dammit, nature, where is my cell signal?!


So we continued on into Amsterdam proper, which was a bit of a shock to the system after a day of riding through many middles of nowhere, and then through a tranquil forest. No photos, because it was far too chaotic to take out my phone.


Matt wanted to try sending his message again, and needed some coffee, so we stopped off at a coffee shop. I stayed out with the bikes while Matt went in. Then he came back out, without coffee, because.. this was not really the kind of coffee shop that sells coffee.

 

"Not that kind of coffee shop."


But he managed to get the message sent, she confirmed we were good to check in, and we finally headed for our first airbnb accommodation (of the trip, and also ever!): a houseboat!

 

A houseboat!


The place was tiny. Basically just a room with a bed in it, and then a bathroom which was oddly large, almost the same size as the bedroom. But it was so pretty, and the view was amazing, and ducks and swans would randomly stop by our window for snacks. I know this is only the first accommodation I'm telling you about, but I'm going to go ahead and spoil the fact that we both voted this probably our favorite place we stayed.

 

Our little window, and our view.

 

Yes, that tub is amazing, but I didn't use it for anything other than drying clothes. And filming a vlog.


Oh hey, I forgot I actually did a video tour of the houseboat! So here's that:

We were pretty ready to be done with our bikes for the day, so we got a recommendation from our host on where to eat dinner, and headed back out on foot to see some of the city.

 

Our houseboat is somewhere down the row on the left there, but not visible in this photo.

 

Great little dinner place.

 

Can't remember what Matt got (meat thing), but mine was a stuffed artichoke. So delicious.

 

Celebrating a successful first day riding!


After dinner we strolled around a bit more, then headed back to the houseboat for an early bedtime with no alarm set the next day.

 

Rumpled friend.

 

Creeper.

 

I don't even know what I said in here, because I haven't watched any of my vlogs after I recorded them. Ha.


Total miles for day 3: 55.99 miles