Back

Slightly rosy-cheeked (despite applying sunscreen 5 times yesterday), but otherwise returning in excellent health. And I made it all 100+ kilometers, although I walked my bike up several large hills (it was fully loaded with a tent, sleeping bag, mat, food and clothes for 4 days). That said, I'm really too tired to write anything even vaguely interesting. So here are some photos instead. In case you still haven't guessed where I am, a few extra hints:

- A very flat land
- With beautiful beaches and dunes
- And endless flowers (are those tulips in the photos?) and sheep
- Where the wind resistance can stop a fully loaded bike from coasting downhill
- And it rains part of every day
- And when it does rain and you happen to be outside, strangers will wave you into their house and make you tea. Even when you are 10 people, including 4 rowdy kids
- And a tiny country where the people love to 'camp' on exceedingly small plots of land in exceedingly crowded campsites. I was awoken this morning at 6:15 am by a baby. Couldn't tell you if it was the family to the left of us or to the right of us because both were within about 3 meters of our tent

And now, photos:

It started out like this ...
with quite a few of these along the path ...
and a lot of help for the little legs along the wayand then the path changed to something like this (yes, that's my fabulous bike. i rented this one but it's almost exactly the same as the one i own in nyc) ...
and pretty soon it looked like this:
which looks like this around dusk:
And then I was awoken on Day 3 by a very excited non-English speaking 7-year-old telling me all about some wild, dangerous animal that was about to stampede through my tent. And he was pretty on point, except for the fence protecting us (my tent is the blue one, if that's not obvious):
any idea what this animal is? I haven't a clue, but everyone else ate it for lunch on Day 2:
And then it was more dunes:
And my first-ever belly shot, taken with the aid of the timer option. Something like Week 7, but I wasn't exactly starting with a washboard as JD would point out. In fact, that might just be the enormous pile of french fries I ate for lunch:
And then we biked past crazy kids jumping over/into dikes:
And through little towns:
And past three blushing brides ...
And beautiful flower field after field:
more flowers:
But some of the fields had already been cut (to let the bulbs grow larger). I didn't realize that the flowers are still cut by hand, by people lying in a tractor-like thing like this (if you enlarge this photo you can see 2 pairs of legs sticking out of the tractor):
And then sadly, they look like this (note the large pile of dead, smelly flower heads):
And then we took a ferry to an island and camped there:
And then I biked to the boat to the train back to my very own city and returned my rented bike and lugged my tent and sleeping bag and mat and clothes onto the subway and took a shower and went straight to bed.
(bike on the train. no, i didn't not lift it. i nagged random men on the train platform to lift my bike onto the train and off of it and to carry it out of the train station)