Castles and Tulips

 There are many nice things about riding in Holland.  It's flat...very flat...We're experiencing less than 150 meters of elevation change every day.  A 40 kilometer ride in Ardrossan by comparison will see around 250 meters of elevation change presuming one doesn't intentionally seek out hills to climb.  On one day in Portugal the elevation change was over 1000 meters - 10 times what we're experiencing in Holland.  Secondly, about 95 percent of the riding that we're doing sees no vehicles other than the odd scooter and other cyclists.  To be honest I expected much of our riding to be in areas that were significantly built up.  Holland's population is a lot higher than Canada's; it's land base is much smaller; and about 80 percent of the population lives in the areas around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague and Haarlem.  I've been completely surprised (pleasantly so) by the areas of park land, farms and other rural areas through which we've ridden....

 Three days of riding - 1) from Haarlem to Leiden; 2) from Leiden to Gouda and 3) from Gouda to Dordrecht.  We set out on Sunday morning and went west to the coast of the Netherlands.  I'm personally falling in love with the Netherlands simply because I am in awe of their transportation systems; road networks; bike paths.  The buses are frequently on dedicated roads and lanes which means that they move from location to location quickly and efficiently.  One one of our bus rides the bus stopped and announcements in dutch and english informed us that the bus would pause for two minutes because it was ahead of schedule.  We've now ridden about 150 kilometers - none of those were on roads of any particular significance.  That is not to say they are irrelevant - for the few residents and cars that travel along them, they definitely are not - and for us cyclists they provide excellent ways of getting around.  Much of our riding has been on dedicated cyc...