Dusselfdorf - rest day

No riding today, and we played the tourist by eating our way around the city of Dusseldorf.

Firstly we took the tram out to a ruined castle on the Rhine - Kaiserpfalz dating back to the 10th century, built by Emperor Heinrich III to protect the town of Kaiserwerth. The some of the walls are 4.5m thick. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

We shared the tram ride out to the castle with 100's of people dressed up in cosplay costumes heading to the Dusseldorf Anime and Japan festival. So vibrant and fun. No photos. 

The fountain on the top right is the Mackbrunnen. 

After the castle we walked around the town of Kaiserwerth, which was very lovely with historic buildings and interesting architecture. We took some time to have a cuppa in the square before heading off for our next adventure.

We headed to the south of the city to Hamm, where a town festival was being held and it was a great experience. The festival had live bands, street food stalls, flower displays, and a jousting competition, with horses and lancers. This was great fun to watch.

Lunch was a very large bratwurst

One of the attractions was this bird of prey show with giant hawks and owls on display . The birds were gorgeous.

We made a special effort to make sure we did not miss this band - the Happy Gangsta's whose music was a mix of hip hop, polka and Oompa music. Good fun. The orange juicer on the right of the photo was the best piece of engineering I have ever seen - orange juice on demand. You can see one in action at this link.

We then headed back to the city for a bit of a rest before dinner. We were lucky to ride on the historic Tram which had been pulled out to transport people to the Hamm festival from Dusseldorf centre. This one was from the 60's and Wayne was in his element. Dusseldorf has a lovely Old town as well. 

We headed into Aldstadt (Old town) for dinner and stumbled upon this heaving Jazz festival playing in the street. It was Whitsunday, so everyone had Monday off as well. it was such a great atmosphere. The beer was flowing freely, people dancing and enjoying the beautiful day. 

We located a beer hall that Elliot had identified as worth visiting and it was fab. 

Uerige It was inside and right in front of the music with all the windows open, the food was

outstanding and very reasonably priced. Who needs to talk while eating yummy sausage?

After dinner we walked around the town having a look at the statues, buildings and stopping to watch some more of the Jazz festival going on around the town.

Top left & Right  The Schifffahrtmuseum or  Maritime museum, it used to be part of a castle.
Botton left - Rathause or Town hall
Bottom right - Jan Wellem Equestrian Statue (one of the founders of Dusseldorf) 

Top left (no idea)
Top right : Kirche st Andreas
Bottom left: Martinssaule (St Martin and the begger)
Bottom right: Vier Karyatiden (The 4 arts)

After walking around town for a bit we headed through the very large park in the middle of the city that has many paths and a few lakes. The photos below were from that part of town.

This is a shopping mall with the Apple store inside. It is very impressive to look at.

A little bit of street art.

All of us in front of the Rathaus after a fantastic day out and about in Dusseldorf.

Venlo to Dusseldorf

8 June 2019 - Day 3

61.91km                                                                               

Total distance on the trip 224.61

3:58:04 moving time

205m  elevation

Total elevation 437

We started the day with hearty breakfast at the hotel with the now obligatory Sprinkles and Cheese loading. 

It was a pretty chilly start to the day with the temperature starting at 13 degrees celsius, with a real feel of 10 degrees. We set off at about 8:42 with a light drizzle happening and ourselves and our packs covered in plastic. Of course 5kms into the ride we had to peel off as we got pretty hot despite the drizzle.

The first surprise of the day was riding through a beautiful forest  to cross the border and coming across an old wartime airfield called Fliegerhorst Venlo which used by the Germans in WW2, and then the Americans after liberation. You can find out more at this link at Wikipedia. It was very interesting, however there was not much in English which was a shame as we missed seeing the remaining buildings further down the runway.  We did go for a bit more of an explore through the forests around there. It was a very pretty ride.

The above photos show some of the beautiful landscapes we rode through, mainly on small tracks through paddocks and alongside canals. The German bike infrastructure is pretty good, especially in the rural parts of the country.

We rode through some small towns and had morning tea at Gerath at about 10:30 - we were so cold at that time as it had just started to rain again and we needed to warm our core body temperature. Because it was a Saturday morning, and before 11 am it was difficult to find anything open other than supermarkets. Thankfully there was one cafe tucked away that we found that had delicious pastries, but was also really really warm inside. Just what we needed.

We had a late lunch at Willich - again finding the only place open on a Saturday afternoon being 'Ali Kebab Haus'. 

We proceeded down along the main road to Dusseldorf, and came across the mighty Rhine on our entry in Dusseldorf. Last time we visited this city was in 2014, again on our bikes on our way through to Cologne on a really wet and cold day. This current day had warmed up to a balmy 18 degrees celsius.

We managed to find our hotel - The Holiday Inn which was right alongside the north south main train line, and we had a prime view of the comings and goings of the trains - Wayne was in his element. We had a bit of a rest then met our daughter and her partner to for dinner.

We had a dinner at a German restaurant, which served traditional German fare and was suitably decorated in a german theme. It was called Dorfstube Düsseldorf The food was yummy, so tasty and we were all wowed by the German dessert "Kaiserschmarrn" or scrambled pancakes. Delicious.

We then walked back along the river toward the city, with plans to walk all the way home, but the rains came and we ended up having to call an Uber. We were however, rewarded with a full rainbow over the city of Dusseldorf and the amazing colouring from the lighting.

Top : - The Gehry Buildings of Dusselfdorf, bottom photos are poor photos of the multitudes of 

wild rabbits we saw in the parks

Top photo: sunset lighting over the city, bottom left photo, historic buildings along the historic
west bank away from the city. 

Different views of the city and the lighting.

Our small group enjoying the cool evening along the banks of the Rhine.

The amazing rainbow we could not stop looking at and taking photos of.

Nijmegen to Venlo ...

Le tour 2019 begins ... 

7 June 2019 - Day 2

69.5 Kms                                                                               

Total distance on the trip 162.7

3:56:28 moving time

100m elevation

Total elevation 232m

We had planned to spend the upcoming Whitsunday public holiday weeked in Dusseldorf with our daughter and partner, bikes are not allowed on the Intercity trains (ICE), and we thought it would be OK to ride from Nijmegen through to Dusseldorf. (We could have taken a german regional train to Dussledorf from Venlo and spent a day riding around Dusseldorf - but we didn't take that option.)

This day of riding was mentally and physically tough, read on for more about this ...

We caught a train to Nijmegen to begin our cycling crusade. We rode 66kms on a route that Google selected for us. It was essentially a straight line from beginning to end along a main road (on a separated bike track of course). We also had to contend with a wicked 20km/h headwind from beginning to end with gusts of over 30 km/h. Our progress was slow and painful but we did see some nice things. 

The Maas river was so close, but without tracks to ride on we could not enjoy the water at all. There were a couple of times we diverted to try to find a more interesting route, but, it was not to be. 

The off road attempt we made - Wayne going far ahead to get the edge on the weight of his bike.

We even tried a single MTB track fully loaded - we did not fall off, but it was not quite as fun (read, no fun) as being on a lighter bike. Wayne was not impressed about this diversion with his very heavy load.

We saw a number of deer farms, sheep in custody and a couple of ostriches just hanging out on a small block of land.

Beautiful, historic Arcen.

As we got closer to Venlo we passed through a very historic town called Arcen, it had a castle and beautiful gardens, but we were really tired from the ride and only took a few minutes to appreciate the historic buildings.

The parade through the main street of Venlo.

We stayed right in the centre of Venlo at The Hotel Puur, which was very close to the Markt and old buildings. The town had a parade for all the children who had been walking running 2kms a day during the week. All of the school children were in this parade along with Oompa bands and all sorts of parade fun. This was the highlight of our otherwise hard riding day.

I also met the largest dog I have ever met. It was a wolfhund and he was lovely. 

Venlo is right on the border with Germany and has a long history of changing between the Netherlands and Germany.

Warm up ride in Amsterdam

Warm up ride seeing the outlying sites - Day 1

74.9 kms
Total distance 93.2

Moving time 

93m elevation
Total Elevation 225

The weather started pretty awful with storms and consistent rain. Had a late & long breakfast then thought we may as well do a warm up ride in Amsterdam before our travels tomorrow.  We rode from Amstelveen north to the Zaanse Schans where there is a cluster of nine very old windmills on a river. We started out quite late after the rain stopped (11am), it was still very cool on the bike, needing multiple layers, but at least it was not raining anymore.

To get where we wanted to go we had to ride through some industrial culture north of Amsterdam at Westpoort before we crossed the Noordzeekanaal on a ferry. This part of the ride was not as pretty as others in the Netherlands, it is the main shipping port for Amsterdam. Not a lot of photo opportunities.

We needed to cross the Noordzeekanal on a free ferry and beside the ferry point there was this cute kissing dutch couple....

We wound our way next to the train lines north passing through the southern part of beautiful Zaandam which has the name of Russische Buurt - translated into "Russian neighbourhood", and is the case with most parts of the Netherlands it was really old and had an important story. It had the most amazing architecture, all painted in different colours and shades of the same colours. 

These are not my photos, we travelled too quickly through the town to get photos - these are 

from wikipedia. It was so pretty. The story is that Czar Peter I of Russia resided here in 1697 during his Grand Embassy to learn ship building and many Russians stayed to build ships after he left.

Onto the windmills just up the road - but before we got there I had a seat mechanical which needed to be fixed at the very convenient bike shop. As we were not fully laden for this day trip, we did not have to required tools that were packed in our panniers. But, thankfully I had the mobile mechanic on hand who was able to utilise the borrowed tools to rectify the seat issue efficiently.

Turn the corner and cross the bridge and there were the windmills in all their glory.

We stopped for some photos on the Julianabrug Zaandijk (bridge over the Zaan at Zaandijk) with many others, then headed down the the historic village.

Photos from the precinct of the windmills. There were many people walking and biking along the canals to see the windmills. These windmills have been preserved very well with many little artisan shops inside. There is also a museum and some lovely gardens to walk around.

One of the best parts about this visit about it was the smell of chocolate wafting from the chocolate factory nearby. It was very strong.

We rode back into the little town to have lunch outside at Proeflokaal De Kruis, in the front courtyard which was lovely.  
They also took credit card which  was a bonus as many places in the Netherlands do not 

accept credit card, or only Dutch based ones. 

 After smelling the chocolate all morning we also needed to purchase some of the 

locally made variety aptly named "Smells like chocolate"

After purchasing the delightful goods we decided not to ride back the way we came but to head to Haarlem which is a really old city similar to Amsterdam but without the tourist invasion and a bit cleaner.  

The ride there took us passed some farmland, some interesting architecture and of course, more canals. There were bike paths everywhere, even this far from a town.

We needed to cross the Noordzeekanal again on another free ferry, we had to wait a few minutes for a barge to go by. On the ferry we met some first time bike tourists from the UK, who had got a bit lost, and felt they had travelled about 30kms beyond where they were supposed to be. They were using paper maps,  and had no electronic gadgets to help them. We did mention they really needed to help themselves on this front. They were joining a group tour the next day, hopefully they found them!

We made to Haarlem and what a beautiful city this is with a rich history - first walls built in 1270. We came in on the train station side, and found our way to old town. Due to an appointment with our daughter in the evening, we did not have as much time as we would have liked to explore much except for the Markt. We will make sure we visit this city again.

 Some of the beautiful buildings of Haarlem Markt. 

We rode out of Haarlem on a very busy route. Many people commute from Haarlem to Amsterdam for work as it is a 15minute train ride, and about 30-40mins on the bike. As we approached Amstelveen where we were staying, the route took us on some beautiful tracks along canals, through mini-forests and along some beautiful streets-  all on dedicated cycle paths. 

The pic in the top right of the collage above shows a canal bridge built just for cyclists and pedestrians. When boats go past it 'draws' into one of the banks of the canal. 

I love cycling in this country!