Friday: Oegstgeest to Amsterdam

Oegstgeest to Amsterdam
~45 miles
Weekend accommodations: Lloyd's Hotel

Sadly, we had reached the final day.  It started out not great.  There was construction in front of our hotel, with the sidewalk ripped up.  We had not gotten a hundred meters when I heard a crashing sound behind me, and a yell to stop.  In the process of myself stopping while trying to look back over my shoulder, my foot slipped on the dirty concrete, pulling and aggravating my already injured groin, and I toppled over as well.  Embarrassing.  Thankfully, neither us nor the bikes were hurt, and we were quickly back on the way.

Seven miles of riding through mostly suburbs got us to Noordwijk and the North Sea, one of the highlight of the trip for me!  We headed north along the coast through the dunes, a uniquely beautiful area, although the hills were not much appreciated after days of flat riding!  After a few miles, we found a little resort area, where we stopped for pictures, ice cream and beer.  Also utilized was the restroom, as the temperature had finally risen enough for me to ditch the tights for shorts to show off my awesome rampant lion socks!

These bars are all over the bike paths, especially around built up areas, and fun to navigate with bags.  Lots of bike paths go straight through housing developments

Entering Noordwijk

Ice Cream time!

Made it to the North Sea from Brussels!

Finally get to show off the lion!

Our break complete, we pushed on.  We crossed into North Holland, our last "border" crossing of the trip, and after a climb of 47 feet we reached the town of Zandvoort.  This is a popular break off spot to head inland, but we continued north for a few more miles, cycling through the Zuid Kennemerland national park, where we encountered the only hill we found in the Netherlands marked off on Strava as dangerous, where we hit our top speeds of the trip of jsut over 20MPH!  We cut inland at the cute little town of Bloemendaal aan Zee, heading towards Haarlem.

You'd think there are killer chickens, or something, but this false cognate actually means cattle guard

Lots of American cars in the Netherlands

Came across a track with an event going on.  I could hear race cars for miles, had to come investigate!

Good aero positions are kinda nullified by bags...

A bike path through the park (that we didn't take)

In Haarlem, we stopped in the city center for a lunch of absolutely delicious open faced sandwiches, enjoyed watching a wedding at the city hall that happened to be going on by us (a preferred wedding location in much of Europe, our bikes parked right outside made it in quite a few wedding shots!), and then headed to the Jopenkerk microbrewery in a converted church.

Canal coming into Haarlem

Wedding time!

Heading from the town center to the brewery

Someone's cool wooden bike.  Hipsters at microbreweries are a thing here too!

One of the few bike racks we saw there

After that, I'm sad to say, it was a fairly straight shot into Amsterdam on a very well maintained bike trail.  The Dutch tossed us two last navigational monkey wrenches, the first being another one of those newly introduced intersection points with no updated maps, and the second the moving of the route markers to way up on general directional signs, but we were too wise to fall for any of that by this time!  Sadly, the continuation of no signs telling us we had entered a new jurisdiction, Amsterdam this time, had continued, so no epic arrival photos, just two folks in front of their hotel!

Waiting for the red light

Our last "You are approaching intersection" sign :(

We followed the train tracks the majority of the way in.  It was nice to read their mileage markers, and tick off the 100 metres as we went along

Tired and finished!  She saw the hotel before me and took off sprinting to it!

Less tired and wanting to turn around and go back!

Our celebration consisted of a bottle of France's cheapest bubbles (actually, the only French bubbles the supermarket stocked) to celebrate both the engagement and the completion of the trip, and the delicious cheese we had purchased in Gouda!

Bubbles and kaas!