Trippin' with Susan Straley

Our ship arrived at the island of Texel yesterday evening.  Today Steve and I chose the option to bike on our own.  The maps we were given show the bike trails, and Google bikes seems to know them too. We had another lovely day and I routed us to several ponds where our guides told us we might see migratory birds.  I circled the locations on our map. The island has a lot of sheep.  They use the levees for grazing.   Occasionally there were steps or a ramp that went up over the levee. The lakes were formed when there was a break in the levee. I think that the water in what looked like a sea is fresh water.  That is what our guide told us. The water side of the levee was paved part way up with a shelf that was now a bike path. Our guide told us last night that this ship is where some Ukrainian refugees live. We had fun identifying birds using the Merlin app from Cornell School of Ornithology.   I took a picture of the town name where we a topped for lunc...

Hello!   Steve felt he had a cold coming on last night.   Today, I am feeling tired and achy.  I am taking zinc and zicam.   I have decided to take it easy tomorrow.  Steve and I will bike to some birding areas and have lunch in a little city. Today we biked 26 miles in the wind.  But we had some beautiful scenery.   Last night we went for a little walk.  The guides warned us about the mosquitos.  But they don't bite, they said.   We couldn't talk or laugh with our moth open or we would choke! We took a bus back to Schoorl to start our ride. We stopped at a beach.  I never thought about beaches in the Netherlands.  But they have miles of sand dunes and beaches. These pictures were at the restaurant on the beach.  We didn't have a long enough stop to get food or drink. I was hungry and a bit disappointed. Who am I kidding, I was a lot disappointed.  We learned that they cut off the flowers of t...

 Our day to sail arrived. In the morning we walked to the National Holocaust Museum.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see the whole thing.  We had to hurry back to the motel and get our luggage and pull it behind us as we hurried to the ship. Watching the clock and the distance, I realized we wouldn't make the ship by the 2 pm deadline.  So we saw a Tuk tuk and got him to pull us and our bags to the ship.  His bike was having difficulties and he had to stop for adjustments twice.  But we still made it in plenty of time. We learned later that there is a free ferry that would have taken us from where we got the tuk tuk to next to our boat for free.  Steve paid 40 EURO for the two mile ride in the Tuk tuk! Below is a picture of a Holocaust memorial we passed on our way to the museum.  And this sign was in the museum.   The first day the ship used its engines to get us to Hoorn where we would start our first bike ride in the morning. The weat...