The globe trotters go to Haarlem

June 25, 2018

Day 4 materializes after all

sWell we're not exactly globe trotters, but for us being in Europe is a little like globe trotting. Anyway, despite Erika being a bit resigned to not getting away on Monday, we did! We had a lovely cycle up to Haarlem and back to the hostel. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my GPS so I don't have a map of our meanderings.

The hostel was busy in the morning. Breakfast was included and was very good

So we headed off after I had done a lot of fiddling about on the computers. It was really nice to travel light since we left all our overnight gear in the room at the hostel. Once we were on the paths, our mood improved greatly. The weather was perfect. Erika had worked out a route using the knooppunten that would take us there and back on different tracks.

We hadn't gone far before we ran across a herd of deer in a paddock

This is what our path was like at first, near the dunes

When we emerged it was into farmland. I liked the way this machine made a double furrow as it cultivated

I love looking at villages at a distance like this.

Tile roofs come in many different colours

Once you get started, it is hard to stop taking pictures of these lovely clean neighborhoods.

Quite a big lovely home, we are in a very nice area of the country right now. Note the chimneys are made so that storks can build a nest without blocking the airflow

I had to get a picture with the bearded one

Another grand house across the field, with a clock built in

Look at how lovely this picture is. And the weather and the trees were too.

Erika saw a sign indicating this place is/was a home for unwed mothers

Now as we are getting into the city, the bikeways are still lovely

Bench of the day! We have entered the city but Erika's routing takes us through a large natural park

Now we run across them doing something with a stork's nest. I turned my attention to the cow in the other direction and missed the fact that they were bringing a stork down. Below is a snippet of the original

So I'm sorry but this cow caught my attention. I've never seen a cow that looked like some kind of flag pattern before

This was part of the park the storks nest and cow were in

Things started getting a lot busier as we moved toward the city centre

Haarlem is quite a large city with a large downtown/oldtown full of narrow streets and old buildings

This guy was super friendly when we asked him to help us find the main town square. He insisted that Erika should have the flower for the picture, which he needed back to take to his girlfriend

It is hard to take good pictures of buildings that are so large and numerous

I went in to see about gelato but they didn't have any of the fruity choices we were interested in, despite signs outside the door advertising them

I had to stop to take this picture. You see so many unusual configurations of transportation

The history of the pilgrims is very big here. This piece of art seems to reflect the desire they had to create a new society with their back to the old one (she is standing on a sword)

As we headed back, we ran into this. We were able to get through it.

We have been loving the flowers. Even though tulip season is past and gone there are many beautiful flower gardens and fields

On the way back to the hostel, we ran across roads we had been on 4 years ago, so typical of this area

On the nest. The male is swimming around gathering the twigs

The next morning at the cafeteria, a crowd of school children about 11-12 years old were staying at the hostel. Fortunately we were sleeping in the quiet section of the dorms. We had a room with 2 bunk beds and a bathroom all to ourselves

Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 185 km (115 miles)

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Steve Miller/GrampiesThe internet hotspot seemed so promising, and with a reasonable price for data. Is its SIM failing to find a service provider?
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6 years ago

Marvin PaxmanIt finds the service provider OK. It worked for a couple of days (while we were with you) and then it started telling me my profile was invalid. This is where the company's service becomes really bad. I can easily get in touch with the sales department online but they refuse to do anything except tell me I have to send an email to them fully outlining my problem and quoting my order number. In other words, you can't contact tech support directly. Which means that I have to try and think of everything I can tell them so that they don't ask me some obvious question in an answer that I will only get some time in the next day or two when I am in range of someone else's internet. I prepared a proper rant about this as I compiled the message. Fortunately I gave them enough information in the first email that I got the answer I needed (a full day later). The answer was a quite detailed process that I needed to follow which had not been included with the package as received in the first place and even included a part that said "normally the password is '...' but if that doesn't work, try '...'
".
Anyway the process worked. Now back to continued posting :)
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6 years ago