Amsterdam to The Hague … by bike

This is a late posting.

We walked from our hotel to find somewhere to get breakfast and found a place called Bagels Village. We didn’t have bagels, but very much enjoyed a bowl of granola, yoghurt and fruit, followed by a nice hot coffee. It took us a long time to get out of Amsterdam.  We were tootling along nicely when we came across roadworks and had to make a diversion.  We eventually found the route again, but it took some time.  By the time we got to Leiden we were cold and tired, and it took us another two hours to get to The Hague and find our hotel.  We were travelling in peak traffic and had to learn to be nimble and weave in and out like the Dutch cyclists, who are born on bikes.  A very big learning curve.  It look a while to get our brains back into looking out for cycle waypoints mode and, even though we were on electric bikes, we kept the power low so we could get some exercise.  We found it quite tough as we haven’t done any serious cycling for a long time, so our legs, shoulders and bottoms aren’t really speaking to us.  We’ll have a day of walking around The Hague tomorrow and then we should be OK.

We went for supper to a restaurant just around the corner from the hotel.  I had a dish of tagliolini with Parmesan and truffle.  A huge round of Parmesan was brought to the table and the inside set alight to melt the cheese, then the pasta, complete with truffle flakes, was added and twirled around and finally arranged on the plate.  Some more Parmesan was then scraped off and sprinkled over the dish.  It was delicious.

We’ll sleep well tonight.

The main blip shows breakfast, the mural in the café, a bike decorated with Lego pieces, MrMacD trying out his electric bike, the same building I blipped last night and an avenue of trees on the southern outskirts of Amsterdam.  The first extra shows sights along the way, the place where we stopped for refreshment and the outside of our hotel.  The second extra shows my supper being prepared and the outside of the restaurant, Amici.