Day 43: May the wind be at your back
Today we allowed strong winds to push us all the way from Domburg to Leiden. It was another windy day with the forecast calling 25 - 35 mph winds with gusts up to 50.
When you are biking with the wind at your back it's quite pleasant. We were flying at 30 - 40 km/hr no problem. Especially on the exposed dikes and dams. The only problem is when you were going sideways with the wind. We were sand blasted by the dunes and had to lean our bikes over just to stay upright. All the being said, it was much, much better than Saturday.
At this point, I would like to give a huge shout out to Dutch engineering, and also wonder if they are partially mad. The system of dikes and dams they have built to control the sea level is outstanding. For anyone interested, it's called the Delta Project and is worth a Google. Biking over the kilometer stretches of dams was very impressive. We could not believe the Dutch built all of that.
Unfortunately due to torrential downpour our pictures are not that great but we do have some.
Once we made it out of Zeeland (the southern islands of The Netherlands) we entered Holland and followed canal after canal to Leiden. They say that parts of The Netherlands are under sea level, but that was drilled into us when we biked up a hill to become level with a canal. We had been biking below it for 2 kms.
Everyone seems to have a sail boat too, but there are so many draw bridges on some of these canals I have no idea how they make it out to any place where they could actually sail. We biked along a canal on a road where each house was on the other side of the canal and so each driveway had their own draw bridge.
It was a lot of biking to make it to Leiden but we made it. Leiden is a University town that's just outside of Amsterdam. It's a really beautiful town. I liked it better than Amsterdam just because it's not as much as a tourist trap, but more what an actual Dutch city is like.
We decided to treat ourselves and so we are staying in the Best Western Hotel. Yes, not camping, but we wanted to do laundry, get packing supplies, and stay dry tonight! So we are living it up a little. We have fresh clothes, a nice shower, and are ready to re-enter civilization.
Tomorrow we'll bike to Schipol, box up our bikes, grab dinner in Amsterdam, and spend the night at Mark and Matt's relatives place (thank you Michiel and Maureen!) before heading back to the airport to fly home. We're looking forward to being back in the states.