Rotterdam and the Tour de France July 4, 2010
Posted by Chris in : holland , add a commentYesterday, we headed to Rotterdam by train, a fairly short ride where we switched to the metro in an attempt to go to Kinderdike, a place where there are a lot of windmills and a lot of Dutch cheese to be tasted and/or bought as souvenirs. To figure out how to get there, we asked the guys in uniform but they were patently unhelpful, probably mostly because we don’t understand the Dutch names though.
We finally did determine that we could get on any train from the central station in Rotterdam and we’d get to a place to hop on a bus; however, while riding the metro, initially underground but then popping up above ground, we discovered that we were going right above the opening festival for the Tour de France. We decided to postpone Kinderdike in favor of seeing the opening parade.
Down the elevator we went to a median in between two streets that were blocked for the parade and race itself. We managed to get places one person away from the barricades to the street, allowing us to initially collect a lot of individual bags of Haribo candy that was tossed out into the crowd by the Haribo team.
A few cars later, one of the cars tossing hats came by and I (Chris) caught one. Shortly thereafter, the official water sponsor for the Tour came by spraying people with water, pushing everybody back from the fence and giving us great places! I was very glad to have just gotten a hat to keep me a bit dry.
After these cars, the parade began to be interspersed with actual racers. We’d see a big gap forming between show cars and the announcers would get very excited and we’d see a couple of bikers go past, and the parade would continue. We stayed around here until the parade seemed to truly finish and there was only the periodic bike racers so we decided to get a bite of lunch and head back to Leiden.
At the station when we were about to pick up lunch, we managed to get the nicer hats that we had missed at the parade from somebody handing them out at the station! After getting back to Leiden, we got a nice tour of Leiden by car from Minas, showing us the places we had walked the night before and a slightly larger area then we had decided to walk.
Related articles
- Le Grand Départ: Rotterdam welcomes the cycling world (trueslant.com)
- Tour de France begins in Netherlands (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Holland: Amsterday And Leiden July 2, 2010
Posted by tiffany in : holland , add a comment
- Image by chris181m via Flickr
On Wednesday we said our goodbyes to our hosts and got on an over night bus to Amsterdam via London. That was a poor decision. I figured I could sleep on the bus since I have no trouble sleeping in cars, but I now stand corrected. There was no sleeping until the final hour before we arrived, which made us even more groggy than before.
So after we got to the hotel and realized that our room was not ready for us since check-in time starts at 2PM and it was currently 7 AM, we left our bags at the hotel and went to the city center for some breakfast (small selection of places are open at that hour in Amsterdam) and anything to kill some time (I think we both really wanted a nap more than anything). Amsterdam collectively is not a morning person, if you catch my drift. Needless to say time crept by that morning.
So after getting checked in and having possibly the best nap of our lives, we went back to the city center for some people watching. Amsterdam seems to lack benches in most of the city, but there are many planters that work just as well and with lovely views of the canals. The entire city was decorated with orange banners and balloons for the World Cup (soccer), which the Netherlands won today, in case you were wondering. At one place that we went to there was a group of street performers that were break dancing. It was amazing!
- Image by chris181m via Flickr
Yesterday there was a heat wave of some sort that has continued on today as well. I suppose we should be used to much hotter (considering it’s about 90F around noon) but there are very few places that have air conditioning. So we sit and sweat where ever we go.
So today we packed up and headed to Leiden where Minas picked us up and introduced us to his family and to the duck that choose to turn their garden into her nursery. The eggs hatched some time yesterday, so the baby chicks were so tiny and fluffy. So we had to catch them so his children could hold them. Then the mother duck decided that it was time to go to the canal right behind Minas’ garden, so then the chicks got all confused and stuck on the wrong side of the fence (so we helped them get out to the water).
Then he took us for the Greek food that was delicious for dinner. After eating way too much we went for a walk around Leiden’s city center. This city is lovely! There were tons of people celebrating their soccer victory in the streets with loud music and a lot of drinking. Many people in their cars (or even the city buses) honked repeatedly and people in their gardens set off fire works and blew horns. I suppose we shall see what Leiden really looks like tomorrow after the clean up crew does their job.
As for the Work away thing any the remaining time we have before we meet with my mother in Ireland, we have a plane in Normandy to work at that is owned by a friends of one our previous hosts. We shall see!
