Footloose Fietser: Back on the bikes

Left the ship Tuesday and took train to Deventer, a wonderful old Hanseatic town in Netherlands. Visited once before for a day, but now have chance to spend a couple days and explore on foot and bikes.

Took our first long bike ride yesterday, round trip Deventer to Zutphen (another wonderful old Hanseatic town).

The Cosmos' response to our unpacking and assembling the bikes was, naturally, an immediate change in weather. An unbroken two week string of near perfect days... broke. We started out the morning ride to Zutphen in a nice spring rain. But even a nice rain is basically cold and wet. Memorable comment as we stopped to put on more rain gear: "... ah, the first sneeze of pneumonia." Let's hope that is just a joke.

Seriously, it was terrific to ride through the Dutch countryside again on the LF3. Beautiful country. Intensely green in the springtime. And beautiful bike paths.

Weather improved immensely in Zutphen. Picnic outside an old cathedral, then an impromptu visit to Zutphen's museum. Huge luck! Closing days of a special exhibition, staged with support of the Rikjsmuseum. I don't read Dutch, so I'm going to just take a guess at exhibition title: Local Great Painters You've Never Heard Of, in A Museum without Crowds. If that was the title, the curators hit the mark -- the painters were all local guys, they were great, I'd never heard of any of them, and the museum was peaceful with room to breathe. Plus, downstairs they had an exhibit about a Viking raid circa 800, and you can't beat Viking raid exhibits for interesting.

Afterwards... Mother Nature kind of sucker punched us. We discussed whether to just take an easy train back to Deventer, but the rain had stopped, the sun was out, and we felt young and optimistic so decided to ride bikes home. About a mile into the ride a massive wind started, right into our faces, and it didn't stop until after we reached home couple hours later completely pooped. Now thankful for all those stairs on the Brilliance, our cardiovascular system and legs were up to the job.