Into Hades and Safely Back Out

Last weekend saw a couple of long rides, the map being -->HERE<-- (100 kb). Saturday from the coast and east to Weesp; Sunday from Baarn west through Breukelen to Alphen aan den Rijn.

After flawless train rides into a strong wind (so as to bike back downwind!), I unloaded at Zandvoort Aan Zee (roughly: sand castle on the sea, that is, the North Sea). From the little train station, the coast was only a couple of hundred meters. The flags in front of the all-but-abandoned resort hotels stood out straight, in my direction.
 

 
 

For no real reason other than not wanting to ride along the tracks I had watched out the train window, I turned north for a few kilometers, and rode through more very attractive dunes.
 

Both tourists and the Dutch seem to have the good taste to admire Haarlem (the real one).
 

A Haarlem market, Saturday morning. It is amazing how easy it is to get used to scenes like this when you've been here just a few months.
 

 
 

I meandered eastward towards Hoofddorp, in no particular hurry. Across the canal from Zuid-Schalkwijk (just try to pronounce it), I watched this couple make excellent time.
 

And I came unexpectedly to the west side of Schiphol airport. This jet had just landed and raised some interest--a US-flagged jet with no other markings. (I wonder if they were watching us as much as we were watching them.)
 

This little guy seems lost on a large spool of tubing left by the runway.
 

I had really wanted to see this foam bus terminal in Hoofddorp. Wired magazine had a picture of it, and I found the main bus terminal west of the train station, but I'll be damned if I could find the foam thing.

Out the east side of Hoofddorp is this utterly hideous American-style nightmare: fuel-burdened international jets howling overhead out of Schiphol, noisy stinking freeways full of rude drivers, fast food belching toxic burger smoke--all the worst parts of one possible overcrowded future.
 

If the Netherlands must become even more (over-)crowded, I hope they choose a better way than this.
 

Not that the Netherlands' silent majority much care.
 

Away from Schiphol and Hoofddorp-Hades, things quieted rapidly. Alsmeer, De Kwakel, Uithoorn, and across the Amstel river at Nessersluis on this cable-drawn ferry, for 35 cents. The map (top of this post) doesn't show it well, but the path was serpentine so that I advanced eastward only slowly. Rather than continue home to Bussum, I stopped at the Weesp train station to save myself an hour's ride.
 

Tomorrow the wind will shift 180 degrees, I will ride west to east.