Journey to Woerden

Today’s forecast called for much cooler temperatures.  Good thing, because yesterday was quite hot.  Long sleeves would be welcome.  I packed so light I ran out of short sleeve t-shirts and had to wash them all in the sink.  I wasn’t sure if they would be dry by this morning.  Turns out they were, but it was cool enough for long sleeves anyway.

Since we didn’t get much of a chance to do any shopping yesterday because of Sunday’s closures, we stuck around for a while this morning to take in a cheese shop that was recommended to us.

We got there just as it was opening.  I’m not much of a cheese person, so this didn’t bother me all that much, but Deb was disappointed that there weren’t many samples out to be tasted. But she was soon rewarded as one of the employees came out with lots of samples and began distributing them about the store.

She soon had a basket with several kinds of cheese.  Hoping to round out the samples, she put a small block of cheddar in the basket.  When we went to pay, the owner picked up the cheddar and told her, “You don’t want this. You can get it anywhere in the world. You gotta get something that you can only get here.”

When Deb told him why she wanted it, he told her, “Don’t do it. Cheddar is for pussies.”  He motioned to some other cheese in the case next to the cheddar. “You gotta get something with some ​balls​,” he said, “like that.”

Deb dutifully returned the cheddar and picked up what he indicated.  After we paid the bill, he jokingly remarked, “Now I can close the store for the day.”

And now I have a new problem.  Getting all this cheese home on an airplane. This adds quite a bit of weight and volume to our luggage so that will be a challenge.  It’s quite a colorful assortment.  Black garlic gouda.  Tomato.  Walnut.  Pepper.  Vintage Cheddar (that’s the one with balls).  And others.  One of them is even blue and has lavender in it. I kept the receipt to know what all we bought. 

Gouda is also known for its stroopwafels.  In the US, we have vending machines for pop and candy bars, here there was an entire storefront that was a vending machine for stroopwafels.  Make your selection at the little kiosk in the middle of the room and, once you have paid for it, one of the doors on the walls of the room pops open and you can grab your purchase.  I’ve never seen a vending machine quite like this one.

Having successfully done some shopping, we took off towards Woerden, a trip of approximately 40km.  Today the trip was not so much about the destination as it was the journey.  Most of this path goes through the Green Heart of the Netherlands, rural land surrounded by such large cities as The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and others.  It was a delightful ride, made more pleasant by the cooler weather, which even felt a bit chilly at times due to the wind.

When we passed through the little town of Haastrecht, we stopped at a bakery and sampled some chocolate and sweets, eating them at a table outside along the street. We weren’t in any sort of hurry so we could stop when we wanted, and for as long as we wanted.

We passed a few of the iconic windmills along the way, and stopped by one that was actually running.  This one’s purpose was to pump water from the lower level canal next to it to the higher level canal on the other side.  It was cool to see it in operation, sails unfurled and spinning and hear the rush of the wind in the sails.  At one time, the landscape was dotted with hundreds of these, however the advent of steam powered pumps and then electrically powered pumps resulted in many of these windmills being destroyed or falling into disrepair.  This one was restored and fully operational and, although it was pumping water, it is no longer essential to prevent the land from flooding. It is now something to be preserved.

Our journey took us along the top of several dykes, through quite a bit of farmland, and usually along canals along one or both sides.  One thing about this area is you are never far from water.  It is literally everywhere.

Woerden is much smaller than the other cities we’ve visited so far, but it does  have the typical city square with a big church on one end.  This square was quieter than usual and we soon found out that a lot of businesses here are closed on Mondays.  So the museum was closed, one of the cheese shops we tried to visit was closed, and other things we inquired about didn’t open until 11am on Tuesday.  So we visited places that were open.

Casteel Woerden is a castle built for military purposes and really doesn’t look like the stereotypical castle, except for the moat.  It has since been converted to a restaurant. We were told at the visitor information center that we should walk through the dungeon.  “It was a really bad dungeon,” said the woman we talked to.

When we finally figured out how to get into the dungeon, we found a long room underneath the castle with a series of long tables with white tablecloths, place settings, and wine glasses.  This dungeon is now set up for banquets.

We sat down to eat in the city square at a restaurant recommended by the same woman.  She may have mis-called the dungeon, but this restaurant, Van Rossum, a farm-to-table restaurant right on the square, was a winner.  We had their free-range Dutch chicken and fries, and the fries were served with mayonnaise as is very popular around here.  The chicken was amazing.  Fries with mayonnaise taste like ... well ... fries with mayonnaise, but this was a truffle mayonnaise which was delicious.  We also asked for ketchup but that went largely untouched.  

Tomorrow we take the last leg of our journey back into Amsterdam.  This will be the longest segment yet, at around 50 km.  Not looking forward to navigating Amsterdam. It’s my least favorite city of all that we have visited so far.  And the route seems to cut right through the middle of it.