Bike Tour Day 6

Rotterdam - Gouda - Alphen - Nieuwkoop

Since we hadn't made it to Kinderdijk, we made sure to pass by two windmills, the 'Ster' (1829) and the 'Lelie' (1777) in Rotterdam. These 'snuifmolens' (snuff mills) still grind spices and make tobacco.

From here we pushed on and biked hard through more fields to get to Gouda, about 25km from Rotterdam. Today is a big day and more rain is coming... 

Gouda is a beautiful city. I had never been to the 'Kaasmarkt', the traditional cheese market, but we were lucky for Thursday is the market day. The gorgeous historical town hall greeted us. The many food stalls have many traditional foods for sale, like 'stroop wafels', 'broodje haring' (herring sandwich), 'oliebollen' (doughnuts without a hole in the centre) and 'appel beignets' (apple fritters). Traditionally oliebollen are only to be found in December, around Christmas and New Years, but Lief got to taste some again. 

Sure enough, after an early lunch the weather started to change. Dark clouds showed up, and we biked as fast as we could through fields and narrow paths to Alphen aan den Rijn, for a cup of tea with my uncle and aunt. 

Onwards! We managed to stay dry and beat the rain this time, arriving at our hotel Zuideinde in Nieuwkoop just before the heavy rain started again... 

Next: Last day, back to Amsterdam...