MARCH 26, SUNDAY

CIRCLING AROUND HAARLEM BY CAR

Another wonderful day in the Netherlands. We borrowed Henny‘s car and drove out of Haarlem down the coast a little way.

First we went to the coastal town of Noordwijk where we walked around a bit and then had lunch in a beach restaurant.

The Dutch take such care of their beaches and woods. Under dunes just beside the beach and below sea level is a huge parking garage with two hours of free parking.

But the beach area is kept free of anything commercial except for a number of unobtrusive beach restaurants which were full of beachgoers on a cold, windy March Sunday in the 40‘s. And then we went on to Leiden, Rembrandt‘s home town were we walked around the inner old town area, crowded with Sunday visitors.

We had tea and hot chocolate in a cafe extension on a canal boat. Leiden is a beautiful old town.

The whole day trip around this part of Holland was only a gallon and a half of gas. We are getting the feeling that everywhere in the Netherlands is beautiful. We have also discovered that although some things in the Netherlands are very expensive, for example this Airbnb (probably about the same as an Asheville Airbnb which we have never stayed in), but that other things such as beautiful bouquets of flowers, wine, beer and many groceries that are cheaper than at home. As long as we cook our own meals we can live here inexpensively. We drove past a few fields of flowers but realized that in a month the whole of Holland will be aglow with fields of flowers.

Driving is made a little more complicated here because of the numbers of one way streets but mostly by the flood of bicycle riders sailing along everywhere, often insisting on the right of way.

You have to be very careful as a driver and even more as a pedestrian when you wander by accident into a bike lane without first looking left and right.

However, this is a bicycle rider‘s paradise with bicycle lanes on every street, along the canals and in the everywhere parks.

The streets are lined with parked and locked bicycles in special bicycle racks. Car parking is hard to find and bicycles are the preferred means of around town travel for most people.