The way from Brugge to Amsterdam has been filled with many things: police, rain, and sand would be primary among them. Our route took us along the more industrial coastal sections of the Netherlands beginning with the huge (and when I say huge, I mean HUUUUUUGE) ships that we saw passing through some of the canals. There don't seem to be any locks here, like canals in Seattle or Illinois, but there are a lot of bridges, and these huge (did I mention that these were HUUUUUUGE?) ships have to pass under them, so we were stopped to let them through the draw bridges. We also were privledged to witness Holland's finest as they practiced rescuing survivors from a simulated shipwreck. This was in the evening of our second day after leaving Brugge. We rode into a "camping" park where we laid out our housses (the big bags Meghan made for our bikes that have been multi-purpose picnic blankets and ground tarps) and our picnic food. While we set up, below us in the marina area a medium sized ship dropped anchor smack dab in the center of the channel. Shortly afterwards, police vehicles began pulling into the camping park, and stopping at the far end. After a while, it ceased to be just police vehicles, and cars full of people began arriving. People came on bikes and by foot. As the crowd assembled, we watched through our binocculars as the small police boats zipped back and forth from shore to the stopped ship. The ship dropped one of its life rafts into the water, and the crowd of people on the deck began to don orange survival suits. About this time, we deduced that this must be some sort of training exercise, not a real emergency. Sure enough, the people on deck jumped overboard in twos and threes, and the police boats (all four of them!) zoomed about (rather inefficiently from our persepective) picking them up.
When the excitement wound down, all of the bystanders left, but the police remained, and we decided to put up our rain fly and sleep. After only an hour or so, we were awakened by none other than a man in an official uniform who informed us that we were not allowed to sleep here in the "camping park," and in fact there was nowhere we could camp on the entire island. So what to do? We packed our bags back up, rode across the sea wall leading off the island, where, after several hours of searching for another appropriate site, we just plopped down at the edge of a farmers field and dozed uncomfortably until morning.
The next days of travel were less eventful. Although we have had rain almost every day (or night) we have stayed completely dry, except for getting wet deliberately on Holland's finest public beaches. The downside to these luxurious days at the shore is that we are still full of sand- in our ears, our hair, and our belongings.
Departing the coast and passing through Haarlem, we arrived in Amsterdam... twice. Let me explain: we were making great progress on the bikes, exceeding our goal of 50 miles per day, arriving in Katwijk two days before our expected arrival in Amsterdam. We didn't want to bother our couchsurfing host by calling a day early, but we were so excited to make it into the city (which would mark the completion of the first major leg of our trip). Our deal was to spend a day at the beach then decide what to do from there... camp another night or head in. So, we ended up lounging on the beach in Noordwijk until the weather turned, then we pedalled into Amsterdam, optimistic that we might be able to sleep in the train station until noon on Sunday, when our host was expecting us. As we arrived at the train station (the Centraal Station), it was pretty clear that we wouldn't be sleeping there. This venture did award us with our first view of the magnitude of bike-centricity that Amsterdam boasts. The Centraal Station has a three-story bike garage, literally jam packed with what must have been ten thousand bikes. And this is only the free garage... surrounding the station are a number of enormous bike stations with 24 hour security and mini bike repair stands. We will be going back to the station while we are staying, so hopefully I can get a picture of the sea of bicycles (called fiets in dutch).
Having been rejected by the station, and not wanting to pay for a hostel or hotel, we traced our steps back out of town (waaaay back out of town), and found another campsite near a community garden ("People's Patch").
Finding our way back into town the next day, we had breakfast in a nice park then checked in to our first successful couchsurfing spot. We are staying with a great guy named Thijs, who is very friendly and fun to talk to. He's very knowledgeable about the history of Amsterdam, and he explained the enormous sea walls that line the coast of the the Netherlands. These mechanical beasts were erected to prevent flooding of the lowlands during storm surges, and having taken our bikes across a number of them, I can assure you they are very large and impressive.
Thijs is writing his master's thesis now, but he took the time last night to take us out to a few favorite night spots. One of the places we went to was a bar in central Amsterdam that operates in an abandoned building. Apparently in Amsterdam, if a property is left vacant for more than one year anyone can claim it by changing the locks and putting stuff inside so that it looks like you live there. Today we hope to get out on the town again and perhap visit the Van Gogh museum and a few of the parks. (I'm a little bit disappointed that we missed out on the M.C. Escher museum in The Hague a few days ago).
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