May 8th, 2014
Yesterday we first toured a Delft Blue factory where all the pieces are hand painted. From there we rode from Delft to Den Haag. While riding past the king’s residence we were able to witness the official welcome of the Ghana ambassador. This was especially significant for our tour guide, Nina, who has lived in Ghana and her husband was from Ghana.
Official Welcome
We then toured a panoramic museum which had a 14 meter by 120 meter painting from the late 1800’s. Lunch was outside the International Court, an impressive location to eat our lunch.
International Court
We then rode up the along the coast in a park of sand dunes. Here the road was hilly with lots of curves. Fortunately we had a tail wind. At Katwijk we stopped for a break on the sea side and a taste of pickled herring. By the time we got to the Elodie in Leiden we had gone 39 km., a very good day. After dinner we took a canal tour of Leiden. Today (Thursday), we had a short ride to a farm that makes it’s own Gouda cheese (6 km. away). We were back to the barge at 11:30 and had the rest of the day to ourselves. We ended up walking downtown to do some shopping. When it started to rain we found a coffee shop in the library to catch up on email and post this blog.
Sand dunes at Katwijk