September 16 - Yes It's Wet but We Have a Little Tailwind

Wednesday - Leiden to Hoofddorp
We were not in a big hurry to leave today with only 20 miles to go. Besides it was wet and chilly outside. The weather is definitely making it easier to think about this being the end of our adventure but it still is hard to believe that the 2 months passed so quickly.

 Leaving the oldest part of town by the East Gate.

It is a wet commute for everyone.

Nieuwe Wetering - it was so dark it felt like evening instead of 10:00 in the morning.

It is a little hard to appreciate in the picture but that freeway is going under the canal. To us there is just something odd about water suspended over a road but not to the Dutch.

Leimuiden

There are three of these bridges along here. This one contains a traffic circle. 

We are back in Hoofddorp. It isn't much warmer but it has stopped raining.

This fort is part of a defense line built around Amsterdam (Stelling van Amsterdam) between 1880 and 1914. The enemy was kept away by inundating the land outside the defense line. The invention of airplanes made that strategy a bit ineffective.

We decided to have lunch at Doppio's, our favorite Hoofddorp coffee shop. We arrived at 11:45.

It started raining again while we ate. Hot chocolate and hot coffee really hit the spot! We waited in this pleasant place until it was a little brighter and drier before we headed to the hotel which was only 2 miles away. 

It started raining again about 10 minutes after we got to the hotel.  We really haven't watched TV this whole trip but this afternoon we watched the Best of the Vuelta (Spain's big bike race). Then we watched the Wallonia Grand Prix live. This bike race is in Belgium and it rained on them the whole time......we sure could empathize! We ventured as far as the hotel's restaurant for dinner.

We also caught up on uploading pictures to the blog and watched the clouds parting to the west as the sun set. It is always a little strange at the end of a bike trip. We've been crossing the landscape at a snail's pace for 2 months and tomorrow we will cross the ocean, a whole continent and 9 time zones in 13 hours.It is one of those miracles of the 21st Century.