Day 28 - Epilogue

While the bike trip around Holland ended upon the return of our borrowed bikes, we still had a few days left to enjoy summer in the Netherlands. After navigating our way via foot, tram and train to Schipol Airport, we picked up our daughter Noonja and granddaughter Lea for a family visit in Maasland -- halfway between The Hague and Rotterdam. Covid reared its grumpy head again, however, and struck our hosts for the visit, Johan's sister and brother-in-law.

So it was an opportunity to have one last B&B, the Rechthuis van Zouteveen, which sits right on the dike next to the Vlardingenvaart, the sweet flowing canal that winds through the green countryside near where they live. Because of its bucolic setting -- gently curving waters lined with wild grasses and rhubarb to one side, sweeping green fields that reach out to the distant towers of Rotterdam to the other -- the B&B has gained some notoriety after a feature on some Dutch TV show. Understandably! And lucky that we got an upstairs unit with a view and two rooms for our little family. It's a sweet 6km bike ride right along the canal into Maasland to visit the Dutch side of the family.

The complexity of traveling with a two-year-old, however, has also meant the need to travel by car with its conveniently large trunk. Being in a car again after four weeks on a bicycle was surprisingly tough! A roof overhead, watching the world go by behind a glass window, navigating streets and traffic (and bicycles!) on narrow roads -- it felt claustrophobic, dark, difficult and sterile.

When finally we got back on the bikes -- borrowed from our generous Dutch family -- the visceral sense of Holland returned -- the ease of pedaling on flat terrain, geese flying overhead and in family formation across the canals, storks and grebes, swans and gulls, meerkoet and ducks -- all doing their dance in this watery world, smells of cut grass and cow dung, the slow drawl of motorboats chugging up the canal. And upon arriving back at the B&B, a final late night sunset sitting on the dike watching the world go by.

There's no equivalent English word for it, gezellig. The Dutch use it to describe a situation that is pleasant, convivial, fun, cozy, relaxed. The closest we get to it is that "warm fuzzy" feeling you get when things are just right. The Dutch are an industrious people, determined to survive the perils of living below sea level in a marshy land. But between their cruisy bicycle lifestyle and the beautiful way they've shaped their land, the people of the low-lands have indeed got things "just right."

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Riding in between Maasland and our B&B requires crossing the Vlardingenvaart, which is accomplished by cranking the wheel on the small 4-bike ferry boat to pull the boat across on its chain. Hard work but good fun!