What a wonderful way to see this part of Europe – by bike! My granddaughter, Sofia, and I cycled from Amsterdam to Bruges. It was a small group, just 6 folks plus two leaders. We went with a tour company called Great Explorations. They did a very good job. We spent two extra days in Amsterdam before the ride began and an extra day in Bruges at the end.
The trip was filled with wonderful old architecture, great food, and beautiful scenery. What was really impressive was the bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands and Belgium. We were on dedicated cycle paths or very rural, hardly-used, farm roads the entire trip. The terrain is flat, but on the trip from Amsterdam to Bruges, we had a constant headwind. We had one day of rainy weather – it even hailed on us!
We really did see all the sites. The Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the old Sephardic Synagogue, the botanical gardens, the flower market, and we even took a canal boat ride. All in Amsterdam. Then on to windmills, cheese making and dairies, World War II relics and bunkers, canals and polders, wonderful small villages and water. Lots of water! Canals, lakes, rivers and the North Sea.
Of course we ate a lot of cheese, drank a lot of beer, ate soft pretzels, and even had hot-off-the-waffle-maker stroopwaffles! I love seafood. We had lots of mussels and eel. All prepared in different ways. And frites (fries) at almost every meal!
Two minor notes. We almost cancelled our trip as Sofia “ate it” on her bike a few days before we were to leave (a railroad track attacked her). She hurt her thumb pretty seriously, but soldiered on. It later on required surgery! Second, the bikes were a bit older than I expected. They were ten-year-old flat bar bikes with caliper brakes and double shifters (hard on Sofia). They were well maintained and worked just fine.
