(Want to read this trip journal in chronological order? Start at Bike And Barge Day 1)
The bicycling was all done, but we had one more day and night on the barge to allow us to see museums and other attractions in Amsterdam.
We went to the Resistance Museum which examines Dutch resistance to the Nazis during World War II in the morning, then walked through the Cuyp Straat market, which is an “everything” outdoor market.
We stopped at a cheese shop that the tour guide had recommended to pick up fixings for a lunch snack. We ate our cheese and crackers in the large park near the Van Gogh museum and Rijksmuseum, where this handsome bird seemed quite interested in scraps.
A friend had recommended the Van Gogh museum, but we discovered a long line that sounded like at least an hour’s wait. Not wanting to stand in line so long, we went to the Rijksmuseum instead. (I think their website is pretty impressive.)
The Rijksmuseum’s collection is varied – they have artifacts of all sorts in addition to paintings. We spent some time in the oriental section, then went to see some Jan Steen and Paulus Potter paintings.
Then we walked through the Floating Flower Market, where bulbs, seeds, and lots of flowers are for sale.
This Vleminckx Sausmeesters is supposed to have the best frites in town – they are good!
We did a fair amount of walking that day. View to the train station.
Just to the right from the previous photo, check the houses in the center of this one in the full-sized image. Those angles were not designed in to protect the bricks and mortar from rain.
We walked to the maritime museum, the Scheepvaart, and went inside this old schooner.
I was pretty impressed by this fire station.
It was a wonderful and memorable experience. You see a country in much more detail when traveling around on a bicycle, and in The Netherlands, you can travel around a fair portion of the country on a bike even if, like us, you’ve never “toured” by bicycle before.
We covered nearly 600 kilometers (about 370 miles) over twelve days of riding, so an average of about thirty miles a day. On our “training” rides we never went over twelve miles, but they were always only a few hours long. On the tour you ride for a while, stop for coffee and cake, ride more until lunch, ride after lunch, coffee break again, and then more riding – with lots of breaks to see churches or landmarks, and over the whole day you find that you have covered a distance without feeling much exertion (except with a headwind!). And the seats and riding posture on the tour bikes are much more comfortable than our mountain bikes.
In those kilometers we essentially circled two of the twelve provinces of The Netherlands: North Holland and South Holland. Our tour guides were very knowledgable, and I feel like I understand Dutch and Netherlands history much better than I ever would have without taking the tour.
The barge has comfortable cabins with nice bathrooms, and great food. It’s wonderful to be able to stay in a different city almost every night, yet only unpack your luggage once. And we were lucky with weather: while it was hotter than we like on many days (and it’s hard to sleep at night when it is so warm), rain is the more common weather in The Netherlands, and we got only a small taste of riding in rain.