Setting off. Day 1: Oud-Ade to Scheveningen, via Katwijk.

25 October 2009 in Holland 2009, Netherlands, daily summary

We celebrated Oma’s 80th birthday on Sunday, June 28, then took a day to recover from the festivities and get organized. In particular, we planned a route based on how fit we’d felt on previous rides and the fact that we would be towing a trailer. Also, we arranged our lodgings, the details of which are well worth a paragraph.

Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets is an organization that publishes a guidebook listing bed and breakfasts that offer special discounts to people arriving by bike or on foot (long-distance rollerblading counts). Exceptions may be made for people who arrive via train to start a bike trip, but cars are right out. So awesome. A friend of my grandparents has used Vrienden op de Fiets lodgings and suggested that Peter and I check them out (by getting us a gift membership, yay!) and we’re really glad we did. We’ve been big fans of the bed-and-breakfast approach to bike adventures since our Ronde IJsselmeer adventure of 2007 (yay not having to tow an extra trailer case full of sometimes-soaking-wet camping gear!), and 18.50 per person per night is about as cheap as bed and breakfasts ever get in the Netherlands. So. Many thumbs up for Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets.

So! With our lodgings mostly arranged, we were all set to head out on our adventure on Tuesday, July 30.

Here we are, all cute and color-coördinated (I’ve decided I get to use umlauts now that we subscribe to the New Yorker):

All set!

I’m holding sunblock in my right hand, in case you were curious, and we even used it. Then we were off, first to confusedly feel our way along the northern outskirts of Leiden, to Katwijk Aan Zee, like so:

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In Katwijk, we got our first glimpse of the North Sea:

Then, after passing through a street fair and getting soft-serve frozen yogurt, we stopped for lunch at a café called Den Blauwen Bock. I highly recommend their salads (Greek for me, Niçoise for Peter). Also, it’s a good idea to pretend that Euros are U.S. dollars when contemplating prices, but I digress. Soon, we were on our way southwest, past scenic bits of Katwijk:

(yep, the bikes and moped are just kinda parked there) and into the dunes:

Google Maps can’t show this part of the trip accurately, because we were on a bike path through a big nature reserve that doesn’t allow car traffic. There were separate pedestrian-only paths and bridle paths for horseback riders:

and it was generally scenic as all get the heck out.

After a lovely ride with plenty of time to take breaks and enjoy cooling breezes off the ocean:

we made our way onto the boulevard of Scheveningen, which we soon figured out is basically the Dutch equivalent of Atlantic City. It was crowded, and a little crazy-making after so much nice peace and quiet, so after seeing a few of the sights:

we eventually made our way to our lodgings for the evening, showered, and got a restaurant recommendation from our host, and made our way past a bit of public art that I could only interpret as a good omen:

down to the harbor, where we were so astoundingly well fed by Vishandel Simonis that I wrote a whole TracyFood post about it (updated with link 31 October 2009).

Thoroughly sated, we made our way back to our lodgings, for a night of tired but happy sleep.