Bike trip day three

Day 3: Gouda to dordrecht
On the third day we woke up to another sunny day so we put on the sunscreen and headed towards central Gouda.  It was Sunday morning so it was very quiet.  There were other people out on bikes but most of them seemed to be heading for church.


When we got to he central market area it was deserted except for the pigeons which Kate set out to chase.  I am sure the night before the square was lively and full of people since it is ringed by restaurants with outdoor seating.  We ran around for a bit before heading south out of town.

The next 10 or so kilometers were pretty boring, just zig zagging through pasture land so we picked up the pace a bit and sped through. (which does not mean that we didn't stop at the first palce that was selling ice cream.  This is vacation after all.). Pretty soon we got to the ferry to take us across the river to the Kinderdijk, the famous place where 24 windmills stand and still work.  It is a world heritage site and it was really amazing to see.  (It was my first world heritage site, I think.  And I also think visiting all of them would be an amazing bucket list.). We went Inside the one that is open to visitors and we were all really fascinated.   These windmills have been standing there for 240 years.  Through wars and amazing changes in the world .  But they are still here and generations of people make sure that they are all functional (for historic reasons. The pumping is all done with modern pumps now.). Really, it was rather humbling.





From the Kinderdijk we finsihed our ride to Dordrecht and arrived there mid-afternoon.  It was nice to arrive early enough to get cleaned up and then head into town for dinner at a reasonable time.  Dordrecht was really lovely with a huge number of old buildings.  Many of the buildings on the oldest narrow streets are designed with a wedge facade so that the buildings lean into the street a bit.  It is pretty freaky. Unfortunately we didn't get a good photo of it.

We found a tapas reetaurant on th square that looked good and since neither of us had tried it before we got a selection.  We loved it.  Enough to search out another tapas place later in the week.

We all got to bed a bit early and planned for another short riding day for day 4.