Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Rhymes with lauda

All is well in the land of cheese. Slowly, I may be learning not to worry. After a restless night's sleep last night, during which my mantra was "all will be well," I woke up this morning to a message from a B&B I had inquired about through AirBnB last night saying that the place was ours if we wanted it. But just to be sure, I booked tomorrow night's place in Delft, for an extra day of piece of mind.

Today's ride was another spectacular one. We lucked out with the weather. The forecast for the past few days had been for scattered thundershowers today, but this morning, it had miraculously changed to partly sunny. So, glorious riding weather except for a little bit of wind. But this is Holland after all, and our ride took us through the heart of windmill country, Kinderdijk, so no wind would have been sad, since the mills wouldn't have been turning. Actually, only two were: a more modern one and the museum mill. Truly spectacular. (I wish I could post pictures, but I can't seem to access my iphone camera roll from the Blogger post entry window.)

From Kinderdijk, the LF2 took us through some really beautiful farmland. Lots of cows, sheep, goats, roosters, pigs, etc. Also lots of great birds. It's a good thing we didn't bring a field guide with us, or we would never get anywhere. But it is nesting season, so we stopped a few times to enjoy the sight of coots, grebes and swans on nests right beside the bike path. We only had to ride into the teeth of the wind for a few kilometres, and Sonia was happy to ride in my lee for most of that. But even with the wind, it's a pleasure to ride in such beautiful countryside along such gorgeous bike paths. We got to Gouda around 4: just about 50 km even. After a rest, we walked 20 minutes into the old town, wandered around for a while and found a place for dinner. Oude Gouda is very pretty and we enjoyed walking around after dinner too. Our host also explained why we had so much trouble finding a place to stay here this evening. Tomorrow is the weekly kaasmarkt, or cheese market. So we lucked out again, since we'll be able to experience it tomorrow before we head on our way to Delft.

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