Bike Trip #1: Down the Amstel River

Its been so long since I last wrote something. I actually went to the computer lab last Tuesday to blog, and after spending about 40 minutes of writing, I accidentally deleted everything. I wasn't in much of a mood to write after that...

Anyways. In the second weekend that I was here, a bunch of Australians and New Zealanders did a bike trip down the Amstel River. FYI: the Amstel river is where amsterdam gets its name from. The city was founded when they first built a dam around the Amstel river. Hence, Amsterdam. There was actually some really good weather that day. The sun was out, and we could actually see the blue sky, something that I've really learnt to appreciate over the last month here. We met around 1.30 pm at Central Station before heading off. The mission was to cycle down the river, get to the closest town, find some windmills, and find some cheese. We managed to complete all 4 tasks.

We cycle for about 20 minutes when we fulfilled our first task: we found a windmill. It was actually quite huge, someone/people were actually living inside it. And from its construction and aesthetics, you could tell that it was made quite some time ago. Seeing as it was a windmill, we were obligated to get off our bikes and take a photo. Once we were off from the windmill, we had completely passed the city/urban area and was in the countryside. It was only after 20-30 minutes of cycling, even at a leisurely pace! There were no more buildings, or roads, or concrete, only flat pastures surrounding both sides of the river. In fact, there weren't even many houses built along the side of the river. There were definately a few houses, but I was surprised to see that it was largely quite undeveloped and left as it is. If this was Australia or Singapore, I reckon the riverside would have completely exploited for its commercial value. I think its a great thing that the land hasn't been divided up and developed into apartments or nice houses.

We soon reached a cheese and clog farm. After we got off our bikes, a young guy came out to greet us. And he was actually wearing clogs(I kid you not!). I couldn't really believe it myself. He took us around the farm, let us try some cheese, and showed us how to make clogs using the machines. The cheese was pretty good and at 7 euros a cheese-thing, it had better be.

After that it was a straight ride to the nearest town, Oude Kirk Amstel (Old Church Amstel). The town was pretty small but it had a nice quaint feel to it. The main street consisted of cobble stoned. And it was rather narrow, which gave it a more old-world feel to the place. We stopped by at a local cafe for a drink and some applepie before heading back the 9km to Amsterdam. All in all, it was a really nice bike ride and one that I would recommend for anyone visiting Amsterdam.