Lounging in Leiden

Longer day today, the route comes out to about 43 km.  There was a choice of two routes, we took the longer one because much of it was along the coast  of the North Sea and it just sounded good to be biking along the water.

We rode straight west out of Haarlem and soon were in the Zuid-Kennemerland National Park, so the narrow streets and squished-in buildings were replaced with open expanses of rolling hills, trees, and sand.  This is one are of the Netherlands that is not quite flat, and electric bikes were a big help when riding up hill and against the wind blowing off the sea.

As we reached the coastal areas, it all began to look strangely familiar.  Beaches and rolling dunes and sand and low vegetation; it was looking a lot like the coastal areas of West Michigan, without all the homes and cottages.  When we reached Zandvoort, we stopped at one of the beach areas.  The North Sea was warmer than expected, and there were a few people wading, although the beach was largely empty.  A few workers were setting up hundreds of wind breaks, probably for the weekend crowds, but we were otherwise alone.  We hung around for a while, enjoying the cool breeze off the North Sea, and then pressed on.

We stopped at the Atlantikwall Museum near Noordwijk and learned that this museum is only open on Fridays and Mondays.  One thing about museums here is the odd days they are open.  So far, many of them have been closed on the day we were in the area, but this one happened to be open today at noon, in about twenty minutes.  We took the opportunity to have some lunch, enjoying some amazing krenten bollen (raisin buns) that we picked up in the grocery store this morning.

The Atlantikwall Museum is a preserved section of a series of bunkers that the Germans built along the coastline of occupied Europe during the war.  The North Sea was lined with hundreds of them of them.  This one was reconstructed and open for visitors in 2015 and showed how the Germans used these underground bunkers mostly for defense.  Unfortunately for the Germans, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, causing the US to join forces with the Allies and the Atlantikwall was breached at Normandy on D-Day, changing the tide of the war.  

This location had a bunch of underground bunkers connected by passageways, however another tour group got there ahead of us so the passageway tour was full.  But we were able to browse the command and control center which was interesting.

The trail turns inland at Katwijk and follows the Rijn River into Leiden. We arrived at the hotel at around 2:30, checked in, left the bikes in their secure bike cage, and walked around the old city for a while.

From the hotel window, Leiden looks like any other modern city but the old town, which was once surrounded by a wall and a moat, is the now-familiar narrow and crooked streets flanked by ornate buildings all squished together.  The moat is still there but the wall is gone.

We browsed an open air market, strolled past a few large churches, saw the places where the original pilgrims settled before coming to the US, and saw the birthplace of Rembrandt van Rijn.  Coming back from this, we had dinner at the hotel with my dad’s cousin, the youngest daughter of Grandma’s youngest sister.  We had some great conversations and found out that we have probably met her before, at my cousin’s wedding in Canada a couple of decades ago.