Disclaimer: I lost the battery to the camera earlier in Europe, so most of the pictures here weren't taken by us.
Mike had to return
home early because of a broken ankle, and was still rolling around in the wheel
chair when we met them.
We took turns pushing
Mike on a crowded sidewalk as we headed to a place on a canal for more beer
(surprised?). On the way we stopped for a meaty snack that I didn’t partake
in. It was basically a breakfast
sausage with sauces on top. Dutch version of a hot dog I guess. I ended up getting a sour IPA, one of the
more memorable beers of the trip, because it was so different and tasty. Then
we started to head toward the train, but stopped again on the way and
definitely got more beer, and maybe some food too. The food was basically a
bunch of fried things. Some kind of balls of like mashed potato with ground
beef and then deep fried. Not bad, but, ya know, potato.
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| Pushing Mike |
We took the train to Utrecht, the big city near Nieuwegein, the town where
Floris lives, and then took a bus to Floris’ house where his family and friends
were getting ready to celebrate his brother’s birthday. We had a huge family
dinner, and then enjoyed a fire for the rest of the night. The dinner was
delicious; schnitzel, sausage, wine, etc, and some veggie dish for Acacia.
Floris’s sister Sonja is quite the chef and a very gracious lender of baking
materials for making pancakes later in our stay. Also, since Acacia and I
didn’t bring a gift, we stole Floris’s and wrapped it for his brother.
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| Utrecht. A big university city. http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/7f/8f/76/utrecht.jpg |
The next day Floris made us a solid
breakfast and then the four of us biked into the city to visit a bar that had a
huge variety of beers (some American craft beer too, Flying Dog). Along the way Floris gave us quite the tour of
the area. Pointing out various locks (the kind for boats to move around canals)
and Mike gave us some history lessons. They were a good combo. After a couple rounds at the bar we went on a little walk around the city (with
some more history lessons from Mike. I remember an old church I think that a
road got built through, so they just tore down the middle of it or something
like that) and then to a beer store where
Floris completely followed through with all the bets he lost while traveling
with us. And John bought a 3 liter bottle of beer… which he carried home with
one hand and biked with the other. I'm thinking of inventing a new sport.
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| One of the Locks in Nieuwegein http://www.nieuwegein.nl/2308/waterroute-nieuwegein/files/sluis_herenstr-merw.jpg |
Back at Floris’ house
John and Mike stuck around while Floris and I went to the store to get
ingredients for legit sandwiches. Mozzarella, tomato, onion, garlic, pesto on a
roll of French bread (I really miss bread…) which we toasted and then ate with
soup. Yum. We watched a movie that night and planned on heading out early the
next day.
While staying at Floris’s, we camped in the backyard. Not
because we weren’t offered sleeping room inside, but because the backyard was
pretty great; a nice patch of grass, a little garden, some bees and trees. It
was a pretty perfect spot, just across from the canal.
The next day rolled
around… and I don’t think we were up as early as we had planned. I was up
early enough to make pancakes for everyone. Floris and Mike had gotten pretty
stoked about my pancakes when we were in Patagonia, so I promised I would make
some for them again when we visited.
Floris, John, and I were going to take the train north and then a ferry to an
island called Texel while Mike went
home to prepare for his ankle surgery. The train ride was pretty standard, and
the ferry so short that by the time you walked across the boat, you were
pretty much there. We rented bikes, grabbed a map, and headed off to a
campground, all of us with backpacking backpacks, and likely another bag thrown
on the back, and John’s 3 liters of beer. (This time in a backpack, not in a hand though).
The campground had
rules stating that at least one person had to be 25 at the campsite. 25!? Geez.
They made an exception for us (probably because John had left his beer
outside). Really though, we didn’t get rowdy. After setting up camp Floris’
bike broke… so we drank a beer while waiting for a new one to be delivered.
Then we biked into town and after glancing at some menus decided we were going
for a grocery store meal of sandwiches. We were fulfilling our South America
cravings-nice seedy brown bread, solid cheese (perhaps smoked Gouda?), olives,
PB&J, and beer. Generally speaking, South America doesn’t have peanut
butter and when it does, it is some pretty weak sugar paste with peanuts. Then we
decided to go on a little ride around the island, which, being Holland, was
covered in bike routes. We somehow stumbled on the islands brewery-I don’t
think that was the plan?- and of course stopped for some beers and goat (I think sheep?) petting, but it was too late for a tour. Then we continued on to another town
and got a snack of raw herring and some
fried other fish I believe. The island
was completely flat, fairly car-free, and covered with wild flowers, little
farms, and old villages. One of the more peaceful, human inhabited places I
have been. That night was 3 liter beer night. I had been suffering from a cold
this entire Europe trip, so I called it a night early.
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| Texels Brewery http://farm9.staticflickr.com |
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| Texel Island Scenery. It was pretty nice. http://farm8.staticflickr.com |
We had big plans the
next day. We biked through a forest with a lot of Sitka spruce (trees!? From
home?!) and then stopped at a spot where we walked out to the ocean, through an
estuary and some sand dunes. After a bit of a snack, and relax we hopped back
onto the bikes and made it to the most northern point at a light house, where
there was a stand of jams with prices listed and jar to put money in, so I
bought two jars which ended up making their way back to South America, and then cruised east to attend a tidal
walking tour. At low tide you can walk for kilometers through ankle deep water,
just heading straight out, perpendicular to the shore. In theory, and if you time it super well, you can actually walk from the island to mainland Holland during the two or three hours around low tide. We saw crabs and fish
and then raced back to our bikes and pedaled full speed back to the campground
to grab our bags and make the last ferry of the day. We took the train back to
Floris’ house.
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| Tidal Walking, or Wadlopen as they say in Dutch http://www.holland.com |
The next day we were
heading to Mike’s house in the south. Near the city of Maastricht I believe. The plan was to take the train, but at
the last minute Floris’ brother lent us his car. Two hours later we were
rolling up to Mike’s house. Finding his house was a little bit of a
challenge because of the one way streets in his neighborhood, but we got there,
unloaded our huge backpacks, threw Mike’s wheel chair into the trunk, and then
all headed to some centuries old limestone mine/quarry. This is where Mike
works as a guide, so we got a private tour through this network of caves that
you could easily get lost in if you weren’t paying a lot of attention to your
route or with a guide. We pushed Mike through the canals as he held his gas
lantern and directed our pushing by some interesting art and other sites in the
tunnels. We also learned that the tunnels were up to 700 years old and that
they have been used for smuggling people during WWI. Then we had a beer in the
caves, which stressed Mike out a lot because apparently its frowned upon. The caves were also cool because people lived down there during the war and we saw some cave bread ovens.
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| The limestone caves. There's lots of art on the wall. http://www.maastrichtunderground.nl |
We dropped Mike off
back at his house and then went to a campground (Zinkviooltje, outside the town of Epen) nearby, where Floris had camped
previously. Upon arrival we took turns shotgunning with Floris, to ensure our
Holland shotgun was covered… We probably had some more beers that night.
The
next day my cold was getting the best of me, so I hung around, napped, and
wrote a letter while Floris and John went for a bike ride. Actually we
went for a drive first. We weren’t
sure about Acacia’s recovery and wanted to give her a chance to go on the ride later so we decided we would go for a bit of a drive
into Belgium and Germany. Since we didn’t really know how to get to all three
countries, and plugging “Germany” into the GPS doesn’t really help much, we
took a bit longer than we had expected. But, we made it to the triple frontier
of Germany, Holland, and Belgium, which I think also counts as the highest point in Holland. All of 300 meters in elevation or so. We had a beer and some pie there, and then
continued trying to figure out how to drive into Germany. We ended up going
about 800 meters into Germany on the highway and then drove a few kilometers
further to Achen where we bought some German beers and some baked goods from
the nicest German lady who said “Tchuss!” when we left.
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| Triple Frontier http://upload.wikimedia.org |
We got back to check on Acacia, who was still under the weather
so we offered her German baked goods and then decided we would go on a couple
hour bike ride. I was thoroughly impressed with some of the climbs and it was
nice to do some cross country mountain biking because I really miss it from
back home. The day before Floris had told me about how he and his dad used to
race from a certain point that all of the routes end up by on the way back to
the campground, so we raced on the way back and both had lead legs upon arrival
to the campsite. As soon as we sat down at the campsite we split a can of beer.
This was no normal can of beer. We’re talking a liter of 10%. It was the
perfect relaxer after the ride. After that we showered and then we walked into town for dinner and then came back for beer at
the campsite. I met a puppy that was camping next to us, named Inukshuk, who was owned by a Canadian.
The next day I joined the guys on a bike ride. We road into Belgium, like it
was nothing, and after a slight malfunction with my bike and a bit of nettle we
stopped for lunch at this weird fish farm place. They had a koi pond, that they
grabbed fish out of and cooked up. It was a solid lunch. And of course, we had some beer to go with
it. Then we continued, I was struggling a bit because of my cold, but we were
having loads of fun. Then John’s bike broke…. This was not your standard
break though. Somehow the rear derailleur had gotten caught in the spokes of
the wheel and gotten ripped around so it was like 180 degrees off and bent
badly. So we walked uphill and
rolled/walked back to the campground. Since that was taking forever, I did
manage to get the bike into one gear, so as long as the uphill was short or not
very steep I could manage, but otherwise it was 8km or so of walking. We shoved our stuff back into the car and took
quick showers, or I did, John isn’t capable of that kinda thing and ended up
walking out of the bathroom soaked and covered in soap (for some reason he
didn’t think a towel was necessary either). On our way back to Mike’s we
stopped for more beer and some food.
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| One of the bike trails outside the town of Epen http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17359120 |
We got back to Mike’s for the last big shebang with the
Dutch guys. We had already talked to Mike about shotgunning, and after Floris
had done it with us he was already stoked on the idea. We shotgunned in Mike’s
backyard. Floris made everybody some dinner (under Mike’s instruction), which was typical Dutch cooking; mostly
just a pile of animal protein. Then Mike taught us a drinking game, which
everybody was too good at or something, but nobody had to go into “the boat,”
which is a round for extra losers to basically get really drunk because it’s
nearly impossible to get out of “the boat.” But, since Mike was disappointed about that, I told him I would be the loser in "the boat", but then I got out on the first try and
Mike was even more disappointed. Eventually it came time for Floris to head back
to his house since his brother needed the car for the work week. Acacia and I
spent the night at Mike’s, and had to be up really early the next morning to
catch a train to Maastricht, and onward to Paris where our flight was
out of.
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| Maastricht http://www.ikonmap.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/maastricht.jpg |
Mike wrote up our
itinerary for us and we tried to buy tickets beforehand, but ended up not, for
some reason. Basically we were trying to get the discounted ticket, but ended
up not being able to because they didn’t sell it at the train station and we
couldn’t buy it online, so where can you buy it!? There were loads of kids in
their 20s on the train because there was a music festival that weekend, we were
probably the only ones below 40 who weren’t going. The train travel continued
without any issues, and we arrived in Paris with a bit of time to kill.
First, we got crepes,
then some pizza, then went to the park, and then to the post office, where I
could buy stamps through this odd automated machine, but couldn’t find a
mailbox anywhere. We decided to continue on to the airport, figuring that there
would be a mailbox there. The train was really hot, full, and slow, but we
eventually made it to the airport about 1 hour and 45 minutes before our
flight. Perfect. Except, we were told that our flight was closed for checking
in, we were too late, and were redirected to the stand-by line. After 5 minutes
of standing there asking ourselves how checking in could possibly 2 hours
before the flight, and how we could have missed wherever that was written, one
of the women who led us to the standby line came and apologized, saying she was
mistaken, and we could check in after all. Phew!
However, there were no mailboxes in the vicinity, so once we got to out gate and sat down I watched all of our stuff while Acacia ran around looking for a mailbox, and ended up giving her mail to one of the airport employees who said she would send the letters. Awesome!
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