Leeuwarden to Utrecht

 Today we left Leeuwarden. But before I leave it in the Blog I wanted to touch back to our hotel.

This was our hotel which has an interesting history. The city of Leeuwarden was a Royal City and as a result there was a palace built. It was mostly used by the regional Steward. The building was originally built in the 1500s over time it was enlarged and remodeled. In 1971 it was sold and converted into the hotel it is today. 

We caught an easy train to Utrecht and got in around noon. We spent a while walking around the town.

Utrecht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. It was thought Germanic peoples lived in the city as far back as 2000 BC. The city “took off” in 50 AD when the Romans built a settlement here. A branch of the Rhine River made the town important and it was in competition with Amsterdam for centuries until the Golden years of the Netherlands when Amsterdam grew much larger than Utrecht. The canals in the old part town date back to the 800s and were designed to have basement entry and storage. Today many are used as cafes. There are some interesting doorways though..

Need to watch the first step…

One of the big features of the skyline in town is the Dom tower..it is the highest church tower in the Netherlands. It’s building was started in the 1300s. It was built with a large church The Dom Church. The church was a large Catholic Cathedral until the Reformation when the city counsel turned the church over to the Protestants.

This is a picture of the church and tower arrangement after completion. Unfortunately in 1674 what sounds like straight line winds blew out most of the church nave. (The yellow highlighted area) the tower amazingly was unaffected. The destroyed part was never rebuilt. 

It is still an amazing building. The tower is currently under going major restoration over 3-4 years. 

You can’t really get any sense of what the tower looks like with all the scaffolding around the tower. 

We spent a little while walking along the old city Ramparts. 

Tomorrow is off early to the airport. Our flight is already delayed an hour…hopefully not more as we want to get back to Michigan at a reasonable time tomorrow.

Peace,

Dale and Ila

Leeuwarden to Leeuwarden

 Today we did a loop into the areas that I had hoped to find some family roots. It was interesting as it seemed to start at Breakfast when the lady helping at the buffet noted her family name is Van der Wal which is my Grand Mothers maiden name. Unfortunately the waitress was sure we weren’t related as she had researched her family tree and did not know of any Alidas. While our mileage was lower today we were gone for quite a while as we walked through Cementareis in the small towns we stopped in. 

The first exciting find was Westra Bike store… Unfortunately when we found the place the original owner was a Westra but the current owner was not…

We found a few older grave stones, but far and away the most common were recent. I had heard that to to land shortage the Dutch do not allow indefinite grave sites. Most grave sites are cleared out after 20-30 years. The churches we looked around were clearly hundreds of years old but the gravestones were mostly new.

The Friesian countryside is mostly farming. Think of Friesian Holstine Cows… We saw numerous examples of the old house barn today. Quite a variety of fields including corn, hay, and onions. 

This was a water control center replacing the old fashion windmills. The large water augers can easily move large amounts of water from the low lands over the dike to the lands headed to the North Sea. The lower picture is from the top of the dyke. The North Sea is 1-2 Km away. We wondered if we could almost imagine seeing it. There were no roads going further out so I can’t say what things were like out there. 

Of course what day wouldn’t be complete without a few windmills. Since leaving Bruges we have seen at least one windmill everyday and often more. We saw a few more today but did not get close enough for a good picture. It amazed us to see so many as we biked along.

We got back to our hotel with a bit of excitement… Ila’s e-bike motor temporarily stopped working for about 1 km. Not sure why it stopped or why it restarted… Just glad it did.

Peter from Tulip cycling came by this afternoon and picked up the bikes and that wrapped up our cycle trip. If anyone is interested or considering a trip in the Netherlands we highly recommend Tulip Cycling. Peter is very organized and does a great job of routing. 

Tomorrow we start heading back to home with a train ride to Utrecht for the night. 

Peace,

Dale and Ila

Enkhuizen to Leeuwarden

 Today was our last must bike day. We stayed dry… It was supposed to rain today as recently as Saturday morning forecast. Good for us but bad for Europe no rain. Actually I think it was the hottest day since we have been in the Netherlands. Was into the Mid 80’s which is quite hot for around here. Unfortunately our Hotel room does not have AC so it is hot in there. The average high temp this time of year is low 70’s so it isn’t to surprising they do without AC.

We did not start out biking today. We walked our bikes from the B&B to the ferry dock( about 150 meters) and got on the ferry. We went about 15 miles in 80 minutes from Enkhuizen to Stavoren a port in Friesland. There we started our 61 Km ride to Leeuwarden.

Leaving Enkhuizen.

Arrival in Stavoren. There were some rolls on the water but not severe. Ila did feel a bit queasy along the way. Once off the boat we got the GPS active and set off on our way.

We saw several boats like this in the last few days both in Enkhuizen , Stavoren, and small towns on lakes along the way. This is an old style Dutch sailing ship. The large fan shape thing on the boat is a Leeboard. They actually were a Chinese invention that found their way to Europe in the 1500s. They are ideal for shallow waters as the keel cannot run as deep and the leeboard helps to keep the boat going straight in less favorable wind conditions. Modern boats will have a center board that extends down out of the keel that functions much the same. The trick with them is you need to have a mechanism that does not let water into the bottom of your boat. (Something not available in the 1500s.)

As we biked along we did come upon a few lakes. We were told this would be a pretty part of the trip today but when we were biking the lake was higher than the road… so we actually could not see anything of the lake. I was strange to see sail boats gliding across what looked to be farm fields. 

We got to the town of Sneek(pronounced Snake) The picture above is the Waterpoort. Sneek was on the canals between Stavoren and Leeuwarden and as such it wanted a cut of the taxes. It built City walls that included this water entrance. The walls were torn down but they left the Waterpoort. 

Only one windmill today. We think this was a sawmill as there are several boards neatly stacked to dry in front of the building. 

The Dutch had an interesting way of doing the house and barn in times past. This is an example of it. The house and the barn are physically attached together. This isn’t done anymore that I know of. We have seen many examples but this has been the best to get a picture of. Typically the barn is moved to a more typical pole barn and what was the barn appears to be made into the house. In this one I think the barn was still active. There was a new house off to the left not in the picture.

We think this horse is a Frisian horse. Don’t know for sure but do know it is for sure a black horse in Friesland. Doesn’t that make if a Friesian?

Just when we thought we were almost to our hotel we got stopped by the draw bridge letting boats through. It was interesting to watch though. 

So tonight we are outside in the garden of our hotel waiting for things to cool off a bit. Tomorrow we go hunting for Wiersma’s and Westra’s in the Cemeteries. Not sure how we would find any long lost relatives here… Although we were asked in Middleburg if we were related to Otto Wiersma…. We said unfortunately nee (no)

Peace,

Dale and Ila

Wormer to Enkhuizen

 Today we got started at good time. The sun was out the weather was ideal with not much wind. Today we biked a lot on the tops of dikes that divided different polders. It was very strange seeing different water levels on the two sides of the road. At times the one side would be 10-15 feet lower than the other side.

Today we pretty much stayed in rural places with a few towns along the way. The areas have had lots of reclaimed land (known as polders) As we were biking we passed along many tree lined streets on the top of the dike. 

In the town of Hoorn we saw this building by the port and could not figure out what it was for? City Hall? Castle? Nope in looking it up it was a defensive tower for the port. It was originally built in the 1400’s. It ultimately lost it’s defensive purpose and was used as comercial space. Currently there is a restaurant on the ground floor. 

Yesterday we saw lots of flowers. Today it was sheep. We were on a stretch where the sheep in pairs would wedge themselves between the tree and the fence. Not sure why. Tried to get a picture of them in the strange spot but they got frightened when I got off the bike and stood up. 

Today’s windmills pictures. The top pictures are not great as we never got real close but at one point there were 5-6 windmills in our view. The bottom picture is a water lift windmill that would raise the water out of the polder. It was replaced by an electric pump that you can see in front of the windmill.

About a third of the ride today was biking along side the Ijsselmeer. The IJsselmeer is a large lake that used to be the Ziuderzee. The town of Enkhuizen where we are staying tonight is on the IJsselmeer. 

Enkhuizen was one of the original big port cities in the Netherlands. Hoorn, Amsterdam, and Enkhuizen were the largest ports in the 14-1600s. Unfortunately for Enkhuizen it’s port silted in and larger sea boats could no longer dock here. So Amsterdam grew and Enkhuizen not so much. It is a quaint little town that still retains an active boating culture. It has the largest marina in all of the Netherlands. Our B&B window looks out on to the Harbor Marina. 

Picture of our B&B from the marina. (Our windows are the two on the second floor)

We are getting closer to the end of our trip. Tomorrow is our last mandatory ride. Tuesday’s ride is optional and weather dependent…Right now rain in the forecast for Tuesday AM. Today though seemed like our best day riding. We had great scenery with variations from farms to canals, to large lake side vistas. Several small quaint towns, and even a small ferry crossing.

Tomorrow on to Leeuwarden…

Peace,

Dale and Ila

Leiden to Wormer(Wormer is part of Wormer land)

 Okay I must admit Wormer is a funny sounding name. I tried to find out how or why it is named Wormer but could not find any information on the subject. No count or duke Worm or Wormer. Evidently there were two wormers that were sister cities and back in the 90s they merged into Wormerland to save money by combining city services. 

Well the ride definitely had it’s ups and downs today. 

On the up side we went through an area of the Netherlands that seemed to be focused on flower raising. We passed by several fields of flowers. One field was all Marigolds which surprised us. We presumed that they are able to harvest the seeds for next years sales?? We also passed by some u-pick flower fields. Too many fields to stop and take photos of everyone. 

We also passed by the Castle Keukenhof which seemed like a good place to stop. The castle was built In the 1640s. The estate grew to about 200 acres. It included a large walled garden. Several years back a consortium of flower growers bought the estate and in the spring it is host to many varieties of Tulips. We saw many types of dahlias. Photo is of one of them. 

Back on the road we were guided back to the costal area where we went through dune areas like we saw on our way to Leiden. The difference was crowds. So many people were on the bicycle path. We kept passing and passing people. The other thing they were almost all wearing a bright orange shirt. We thought maybe it was a ride to support the trail…boy were we wrong.

This brings me to the not as great part of the day. Anyone a formula 1 race fan? Anyone heard of the Dutch formula 1 race in Zandvoort? Well we had not but what we did not know was all of these people and more were all headed to the race. When we got to Zandvoort many of the roads were closed for traffic control. We made a wrong turn and that cost us about 3-5 miles of detour as they would not allow us to return back the way we came. We ended up at what seemed like the ticket gate to the race feeling like salmon trying to bike up stream in a sea of orange t-shirts. We finally made it out and managed to not make another wrong turn. It was good to finally get out of the bicycle traffic headed to the race track. Who knew??

Today was a big Windmill day. These are some of the windmills we passed on our ride. But then we saw this:

Count them out there are five Windmills.(actually there is a sixth that you can’t see in the picture but it lost the top and did not have blades. These are most likely water mills. When they are arranged in a row like this they are typically each pumping water progressively higher. Was quite cool biking passed them.

We made it to our B and B. Looking on line we noticed rooms 1 and 6 appeared reasonably spacious. Rooms 2-5 were going to be cramped. You guessed it we are in room 4. Definitely one of the smallest spaces we have had so far. We have never had a wet bathroom before. (Not even our small motor home has a wet bath.) We made ```````````````````````````sure we took the TP out of the bathroom prior to showering as it would have gotten wet during the shower. We do have a great view of the lake out our window. Definitely hoping the room cools down. (Most places we have had do not have AC unless an open window counts for AC) It isn’t to surprising as the average high in summer is only in the mid 70s. Still this summer has been quite hot. 

Tomorrow it is on to Enkhuizen.  Getting closer to the end of the trip…

Peace 

Dale and Ila

Leiden

 By calendar days we are half way through the bicycle tour. By distance we are a bit short of the half way mark. Still we are taking a day off and exploring Leiden. The city over the ages is best known for the Leiden University. It was founded by William of Orange in the 1575 as the only other university in the region was under Spanish control. You may have heard of at least two former faculty… Albert Einstein, and Enrico Fermi. Strangely the manuscript for one of Einstein theories was found in one of the university libraries in 2005 80 years after it was published. For those wondering it was on the “Bose-Einstein Condensate” which is about the gaseous state of bosons at near absolute zero…. 

It must be rush week or something on campus because today at around 4 in the afternoon there were several hundred college students all dressed in similar outfits. Men in black pants white shirt and black suit coat with tie. Women were in black skirts, white blouses and black suit jackets. They were led by a guy walking with a large banner with some logo we think was associated with the university.. Strange.

We toured one of the Windmills nearby this morning. At one time there were over 10,000 windmills in the Netherlands, currently there are only 950. They were used for milling flour, saw mill operation, water lifting out of low lands, and for various other things such as grinding, powdering, pulping(paper production) The wind mill we visited De Valk(the falcon) was a flower mill. It was originally built of wood, torn down, rebuilt, torn down again and finally made of brick. The base housed the two families that owned the mill.

The Miller would adjust the blades of the mill to best capture the wind with the large wheel. Also depending on the wind speed they would reef the blades with fabric to increase or decrease the amount of air captured by the blades. 

The millstones would grind the grain to make the flour. The bottom stone was fixed, only the top stone would move.

The turning motion of the drive shaft would turn the large gear system that would engage the millstone.

The windmills were located on the city Ramparts to give the additional height to catch the wind. A short walk from the windmill led us to the old city Gate.

In the area behind where I am standing was where the gallows was located for all public executions. Currently no gallows… otherwise there would have been a picture!

Later we hiked the short distance to the old Citadel in Leiden(Burcht van Leiden) It was originally built around 1000. At one time there was an inner keep but the citadel and inner keep were abandoned when the city had grown to a size that it no longer made sense to use the structure.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing.(and catching up on the Blog.) We were sick of eating out and so found a grocery store and bought some bread, ham, and cheese for a simple sandwich. 

Tomorrow is on to Wormer. Will have to look up the meaning of that town…

Peace,

Dale and Ila