Europe 2014: Amsterdam...

We just finished spending two wonderful days in Amsterdam and are on our way to France (more on that later). The weather just could not have been any better; 75 degrees and sunny skies both days! The Dutch weather god must have been smiling on us the whole time we have been in the country. We stayed both nights in the Casa 400 hotel which is on the south side of Amsterdam near the University. They had a great secure parking arrangement for bicycles which is one of the draws since Amsterdam is notorious for bike thefts. They consider bicycles as common property and think of it more as "borrowing" instead. Well, we didn't want to take any chances..

I won't go into where we all went, what we all saw, or what we ate and drank, but will have some of that in the pictures below.. Amsterdam is a great Dutch city, but it is not representative of Holland as a whole. I feel bad for those who come there and don't go anywhere else. We left it last on our itinerary for that purpose. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and were sad to pack up our stuff and head to the train station to go south.

We arrived on our bikes in Amsterdam on a Sunday, which is a good day to do that, since traffic is pretty tame. Walking around on Monday and Tuesday gave us a good idea what it would be like to bike in the middle of the week with about 80% of the rest of Amsterdam. I was really proud of Linda on how she didn't let the other bicycle traffic intimidate her as we rode into the heart of the city to the train station. I loved it!!

Our initial plan was to catch a train out of Amsterdam to Avignon in the middle of Provence to begin the second leg of our bicycle trip in the south of France. However, I had been monitoring the weather there and it sure didn't look good on the extended forecast. Lots of heavy rain expected. Yikes!

So, instead we bought tickets to Nantes, France where we will ride part of the Loire Valley, starting at the Atlantic and heading east. It is supposed to have a great bicycle route and is mostly flat as well. We don't think finding good food or wine there will be a problem either. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the French weather god is al least half as nice at the Dutch one..

Linda promised to add a blog entry tomorrow as we ride the train to Nantes. We had to make a short stay in Brussels (where we are tonight) to make all these train connections work.