Holland

On Tuesday 29 July, not trusting the Italian transport system, we got up early to make the trip to Rome's airport by taxi. Our driver told us that the large queues outside St Peter's were to see the "Papa" (Pope) travel from there to St Paul's, so it was a pity to miss out on the spectacle. Nevertheless, we'd been looking forward to getting back to Holland for a while so it was good to again be on the move. The two-hour flight went without a hitch and we were met at the airport by our friend Sofie who saw the flight fly by the highway on her way to the airport.
Sofie and Daan have a beautiful, modern house in a town called Beverwijk (which is about 40kms and as many minutes by train out of Amsterdam). Last time I was here the house was just a concrete shell under construction, so it was good to see the finished product 8 years later.
We settled in for a relaxing day after the previous few days in Venice and Rome. Daan whipped up some delicious pancakes for dinner and the kids couldn't believe their eyes when we told them that it was the main course and not dessert. We also visited some of the neighbours who were kind enough to lend us three bikes for a ride the next day. The night ended with Daan serving up an excellent selection of European beer and wine which had the boys going to after 1am. I could get used to this! His own home-brewed beer is very nice, but bloody heavy. He estimates it's close to 15% alcohol and is similar to Guiness.
Wednesday - the last day of June - had us taking to the bikes. Holland is the home of cycling and nearly every road has a bike lane with absolute priority given to cyclists. The motorists are fantastic, and just as I found while riding in France, the Europeans are so much more respectful of cyclists (Aussie motorists take note - you don't have to drive within 10cms of a cyclist at 100km per hour!). On our weekly bike rides to school, Johanna and I had talked about riding on the other side of the road when we get to Holland, so it was good live up to the promise.
We were also keen to revisit a restaurant nearby called Johanna's Hoff where we took a photo of Johanna when she was about 18 months old. The bikes were sturdy family bikes and mine had a seat for Lachlan at the back (yey, I got to carry an extra 22kgs!). Lach loved it and offered plenty of encouragement along the lines of "hurry up Dad ... don't let the giiiirrls beat us ...c'mon!" (easy to say when you're getting a free ride).
We rode with Daan and Sofie (who also had Paul in a special seat) a few kilometres to the edge of town where there's an open forest beside the beach. The initial ride was a bit slow as everyone got used to the bikes and different direction on the roads, so we stopped in the forest area for lunch together at a restaurant only accessible by foot or bike. After lunch, our Dutch hosts headed back home to get Paul off for an afternoon nap, while the Aussie crew continued on to Johanna's Hoff. We weren't particularly wanting pancakes after having a big stack the night before, but we pressed on for the 10km ride to at least relive an old photo opportunity.
It was very cool to be back, and Johanna loved seeing her name on everything from road markers to the restaurant itself (she's used to her name not being so common in Australia).
After a couple of boys vs girls bike races ("les garcons" were supreme again), we were too distracted and missed our turn-off and ended up near the beach a couple of kilometres off course.
But eventually we found our way back on track and the kids did a great job to cover 22kms by bike - a new record for Johanna who was tired, but beaming from the experience.
In the evening, Daan cooked up a special meal of three entrees including raw herring, eel and another dish of beetroot and potato. I didn't think I'd like the herring, but the whole meal was fantastic and his three-hour cooking effort finished with a rack of lamb with a port and chocolate sauce. The kids, who were put to bed an hour earlier, must have heard us outside talking about how good the meal was because both crept downstairs and ended up stealing half the meal for themselves despite already eating a kids' meal earlier in the evening (we think they're having a growth spurt, particularly Lachlan who has definitely grown during the trip).
Later in the evening, Sofie got a text message from her friend Esther who we saw a fair bit of in the late 1990s when she lived in Melbourne. Esther had a little girl called Tessa at about 8pm, just claiming a June baby when my betting had her giving birth in July. So, to celebrate the occasion we knocked off a couple more beers, a bottle of red wine from Bordeaux and then had some port to try with a few different cheeses from France, Belgium and Switzerland that Daan selected earlier in the day. This time the boys were off to bed after 2am, with the aim supposedly of getting up at 8am for a mountain bike ride through the sand dunes of a nearby town.