At one point today while we were biking, Bill asked me is this what you were thinking it would be like? Fighting back the urge to cry, I answered right now, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking!
We biked from Rotterdam to Delft. At some point on the way we stopped for a water break. While I was drinking my water, Bill swapped the seats on our bikes. We’d taken the slipstream off and moved the child seat from my bike to Bill’s. This caused him pedaling trouble he was certain would be remedied with a lower seat mine. (his seat has springs. Mine doesn’t) The seat swap indeed made Bill’s ride easier. But not mine. It made mine pure torture. That seat caused me the most unthinkable pain as it did its part to make sure Kaitlyn is an only child. I could barely make the trip. When we finally got to Delft, Bill adjusted the seat and I reluctantly agreed to get back on for a test. Finally, my bike had stopped violating me.
We took a break at the market in Delft. I skipped the tables of antiques of questionable value and headed for a shop to check out the blue Delft ware. What I’d like is a pitcher I can actually use. I didn’t see one. So then I thought maybe a dish to hang on the wall. How much is the one with a windmill on it? 302 Euros. But, hey, they’ll ship it to me. I didn’t buy it. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll go to the Delft factory tour… and shop.
From Delft, we took a train to The Hague. Normally, I think you’re supposed to start the morning in Delft, but because of the holiday we couldn’t get the boat through the locks and into Delft. Wherever we were, I’d stopped doing my research into the Netherlands when we booked the organized tour, so everywhere we go, I learn a lot. Today I learned about the government and how much they still love their queen and how most would prefer a monarchy. We saw the Parliament, the queen’s office (Kaitlyn wanted to know if she’d get to meet the queen. We told her no, it was the royal nap time). We saw the Peace Palace, but without an explanation. We walked everywhere in The Hague. There was a lot of walking.
After the train ride back to Delft, the Spanish family didn’t get off. Since we start again tomorrow in Delft, they decided to skip the last leg of today’s cycling. Without them, we made it back to Rotterdam in an hour. Kaitlyn slept in the bike seat almost the entire time. Bill didn’t nearly crash like I had.
In all, we biked 35 kilometers today. 31 yesterday. No wonder I’m sore. I can barely even sit down.
After dinner, Bill and Kaitlyn and I walked over to some huge tower thing Bill wanted to go up in. Yikes. I only made it to the first stop at 100 meters up before getting scared. Especially when I saw that the ride up another 85 meters is in a spinning disk with windows on the floor. No thank you. When they got back down, Bill said it even freaked him out a little bit.
Tonight we’re sleeping on a rather rocky boat. We are docked by a lock that we must pass through tomorrow to get to Delft. It closes between 7 and 10 am because they won’t raise the drawbridge during rush hour. But there is something about this location. It’s affected by the tide and I don’t know if that is what is making the boat rock so much or what… but there is no question tonight we are on a boat. I kept waiting during dinner for it to make me sick, but it didn’t. Now it is actually sort of soothing me to sleep.