Stage 16 - Haarlem to The Hague 53km (28-Jun-2019)

One of the many good things about bike touring for us is taking time out to smell the roses and the 3 days spent in and around Amsterdam was a point in case.
Our base in lovely Haarlem:

A day and half in fabulous Amsterdam:

A day in fairy tale town, Geithoorn

But all good things come to an end, so today, we were back in the saddle and through a combination of good luck and planning, we rode a fabulous route to The Hague. It turned out to be a ripper of a day's ride.
Given, it was a short ride, we took our time over breakie and getting ready; left Haarlem around10am and experienced riding (on, as always, nice bike paths) a bit of everything today. We cycled through, forests, little villages, along canals, past lakes, next to a golf course, sand dunes, even a National Park (Noordwijk-Binnen) with deer and along the North Sea.

Just before we entered the LF1 route, we caught site of a bright purple lavender field. Had to stop to take a photo or 2 and luck would have it, the owner, a young lady in her early 30's was around and happy to chat with us to exchange her experience of travelling in Australia and how she came about growing lavender. She used to be a project manager in automative industry and gave up a well paying job to pursue her dream. Good on her.

Moving along, we waned to check out the beach so took a slight detour. We rode our bikes as close to the beach as possible; the remaining 200m or so was on foot as it was too sandy. This part of the beach was deserted as it was not in a built upon area.

Moving along, we came through a couple of seaside resort style towns which seemed so out of character of what we had experienced to date in The Netherlands.

Moving along, the bike path built through the sand dunes was quite something; a busy little stretch with a lot of cyclists.

Our approach into Hague, was through a very posh area with some stunning large homes, the biggest as we discovered after talking to the guard at the gate, being the King's palace where he kindly let me take a photo with my bike resting on the palace gates. We now know how the poor people live The Netherlands.

On arrival at our Airbnb, we met our host, Abhi, an Indian from Sydney. Abhi is a management consultant working for Ernst and Young, born in Calcutta assigned to work in The Netherlands. He has done work stints all over the world and is doing Airbnb in his lovely apartment until his family joins him. He has organised an Indian meal for us tomorrow evening; something to look forward to. Nice guy, who has made us feel very welcomed.

After freshening up, we strolled around The Hague a little and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere. So many people out and about catching up with colleagues and friends and all the cafes, restaurants and bars were bursting at the seems; I am sure they were partly celebrating the end of the week as I used to during my working days. Work, what is that, I am glad I have done my time; I have slowed down now to enjoy the journey and smell the roses.
No blog tomorrow as we are taking the day off to explore The Hague and Delft. Stage 17, starting Sunday is from The Hague by train to Rotterdam and then cycling to Breda.