This weekend Laurel and I tried to bike to the neighboring town of Gouda... spelled like the cheese, but pronounced differently, which makes me feel like the town itself wants to hide.... which might explain why we couldn't find it....
We made it about 6 miles out of Delft on the lovely bike paths that could only exist in the Netherlands. Pictures of the canals running alongside the bike path don't portray their beauty accurately... from the pictures they look like dirty storm water holding troughs, but in person they are little wildlife sanctuaries for herons, ducks, frogs, and flowering lily pads...
The day was going perfectly... canals... empty bike paths... flat trails... munchies... even a windmill siting... everything was so relaxing we didn't even notice the clouds slowly covering the sky, quietly threatening our lovely day...
It began as a light rain. The kind of refreshing rain that falls gently on your skin, like the clouds turned into a giant mister at the exact moment we needed to cool down.... but then they forgot to turn off... instead the spigot was thrashed wide open. The droplets became larger, icier, each one a reminder that we were definitely not wearing any rain gear... which still might have been ok if it wasn't for the wind. And the fact that we were lost.
But besides the lovely bike paths, my second favorite thing about Holland is that everyone speaks English when I need them to. Which at this moment of icy lostness was absolutely perfect. Unfortunately we decided to lose our way about as far away from a train station as possible in this tiny country, but luckily the directions to our ticket to warmth were excellent...
All in all the day was still quite nice, but next time we try to get to Gouda we'll train there and bike back....
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