In bed for 13 hours, asleep for 9. Honestly not bad.
I knew I couldn’t do anything adventurous. Just getting through the day and falling asleep at the right time would be a victory. But I had to look around a bit, so… Time go find a series of bakeries!
The first one I hit was a recommendation from Zach, only a few blocks from their house.
As I was parking my bike outside, a woman about half my age said “good morning” in bright English. This impressed me for two reasons: First, it was obvious I was a weird foreign tourist; yep. Time to use English. And second, back home, young women just plain never greet older men out on the street.
I told Zach about it and he said “Oh yeah, people out here love greeting strangers.”
I emerged from the bakery with a delightful ham and cheese croissant. This actually set a high standard and it was hard to find a bakery that would top it.
The next place I found did coffee and pastries, so I bought some of each. I didn’t see any “no laptop” signs and there were people working on them around me, so I imported photos for a while. My brain was in no shape to do anything else.
Soon the coffee was gone and it was time for the next bakery.
Note the extra windshield on top for protecting the hands!
I was quickly learning that no particular maps application had all the best routes. To make sure I found the bike lanes but didn’t get sent onto a footpath or a busy sidewalk, I had to compare routes between Google and Apple maps, and then switch to Map Plus, where I could follow the route while viewing the OpenCycle Map.
In due time I found bakery number three of the day:
I bought two things, including another croissant, which I chomped while standing around outside. A nice and easy itinerary for a massively jet-lagged cycle tourist.
On the way back to Zach’s place I decided to take a detour through the nearby parkland:
The viaduct consists of a northern and a southern section. Both sections are being completely renewed and widened. We are carrying this out in the following steps:
Construction of a temporary viaduct on the south side of the A9, allowing the southern carriageway—carrying traffic towards the Holendrecht interchange—to use this temporary structure (the “bypass”). During this phase, the northern carriageway (for traffic towards the Badhoevedorp interchange) uses the old southern carriageway. This frees up the northern bridge deck for construction work.
Construction of the new, wider northern section of the viaduct.
Once the new northern section is complete, all traffic shifts to this side of the viaduct, making the old southern bridge deck available for demolition and reconstruction.
Burgemeester A. Colijnweg is also being shifted northwards so that the viaduct carrying the road can be demolished and rebuilt.
Once the new southern section is finished, the viaduct will be configured with four lanes in each direction.
As I was riding through, I saw some separated paths that were covered in sand instead of paved. I couldn’t figure out what those were for until two women on horseback rode by. Of course! Special paths for critters with hooves!
Every now and then I see a couple of these chillin’ by the side of the road.
“Oy oy!” said one of the riders, in a loud, boisterous voice.
I was all filled up with baked goods, but I wanted a drink to push through the rest of the day. I rolled closer to Zach’s house and found what he later told me was “the bougie part of Amstelveen, though it’s hard to tell because most of Amstelveen looks like that.” A café at a corner sold me a latte-like thing and I slowly drank it and poked around at maps, passing another couple of hours.
