Onward and Upward

Friday night, after getting settled in the hotel, we four decided to venture into the city to eat dinner. To get to Amsterdam the easiest route was to take the hotel shuttle to the airport and then get the train into town. We ate at an Argentinian restaurant (how about that, Mare & Chuck?) where we had excellent steaks and the music was in a foreign language I actually understood!

The down side was that Amsterdam was really less than attractive as a place to spend an extra day. I'm sure if we'd had Bob John's friends as guides it might have been more appealing, but as it was seemed tawdry and not worth revisiting on Saturday. We revised our plans and cycled out on Saturday morning after seeing Roger and Chris off.

We left the Amsterdam area about 11:30 a.m. and rode with a great tailwind for about 30 miles. A lunch stop was necessary, so we left the main route to go into the town of Hilversum. A sand volleyball tournament was happening in the main square, thanks to the importing of what must have been tons of sand. The loud music made that less than appealing for the traditional lunchtime map discussion, so we found a little cafe on a smaller square. The waitress was apologetic that our first choice for lunch, spaghetti, was unavailable. Little did she know that the reason for our order was that it was one of the few things on the menu we understood. We took the fallback choice of hamburger, which was served Dutch style: open face on a slice of toast, covered with ketchup, mayo and grilled onions. The fries were great, served with a side of mayo, of course. We were able to refuel and top it off with pastries from a nearby bakery.

Finding our way out of town and back to the main road was an adventure. We finally enlisted the help of four "pensioners," as Chris would call them, who were on an evening ride to a cafe in a park. Realizing that it would be too difficult to explain, they simply led us out on their way. Though I wouldn't say we had a difficult time keeping up, they rode respectably well for 75-year-olds.

After a quick late-afternoon stop at a cafe for a drink, we arrived at Amserfoort just as a festival was breaking down in the town square. We had a few moments of panic when we realized that the Dutch Open Tennis Tournament was taking place just outside of town. We remembered Gouda, and staying at the Chinese restaurant! Fortunately, the Tulip Inn came through for us. We booked a room and after cleaning up, went to the dining room. This place was a cut above the Tulip Inn we stayed at in Bergen Op Zoom. The dining room was reasonably priced, but the food fantastic. We had Leek Soup with goat cheese (sorry, Chris!), salmon with spinach sauce and mashed potatoes with scallions. The food was excellent, and since the dining room wasn't crowded the service superb.

Tomorrow we'll continue to make our way east toward Hannover. We actually rode up and down what passes for hills in these parts. Chris would have had fun with her altimeter.