We had another good-weather day for our last ride on our Bike and Sail the Tulips trip. We rode to Zaanse Schans and back to Amsterdam in a loop. We started out our day with a quick Ferry ride to North Amsterdam. The ride was lovely. Riding in a group, I don't have the liberty to stop when I want to take a picture. Using your phone while riding is against the law and heavily enforced here. It will cost 150 Euro. So, when I saw the cube houses on stilts built over the canal, and when I saw the house decorated with wooden shoes, I didn't take pictures. We pedalled right on by. Steve and I discussed that it might be better to be on a tour with less miles and more time to stop. Sometimes we biked on paths through flat grassy lands, sometimes through narrow streets lined with brick homes built adjacent to the sidewalk without front yards. We stopped and parked our bikes at a museum with lots of 15th and 16th centur...
Today we were scheduled to take a bus from Amsterdam to the Keukenhof. It's a garden to show off the many many varieties of tulips and other spring flowers. I had a horrible night of coughing and blowing but in the morning I felt a bit better and so I decided to go and wear my N95 mask. But as soon as we took off on the bus, I started having to blow and cough. We learned later that the Keukenhof gets an avg of 26,000 visitors per day in the eight weeks they are open for the flower viewing. Forty gardeners plant seven million bulbs each year. Because I was constantly covering my cough or blowing my nose, it felt like there were 100,000 people there. I was regretting my decision to go. Not because it wasn't awesome, but because I was probably spreading this awful cold no matter how hard I tried to not breath by others. I looked for a blue and white tulip. One does not exist, apparently. But there was blue and white orchids on display....