Off The Deep End

We had one full day on our own in the city. We hit the bikes and headed out. First to a market, then a local coffeeshop before visiting the Van Gogh Museum. The special exhibit there was amazing. It was all about the effect of night and evening scenes on impressionistic painting. Obviously Starry Night was the focus of the exhibit, but what I found the most interesting was the obvious inflfuence of earlier painters on Van Gogh. The way they structured the exhibit was chronological so you could easily see the effect of early Millet on the work of Van Gogh.

On Easter Sunday we were slated for a family visit to Frank's parents' house. However they all thought that since we were in the area Jammie and I should check out the Hoge Veluwe National Park. At this park they have tons of biking trails and they even have racks upon racks of free bikes for you to use in the park.

The weather has been so good here that Jammie and I decided to take a bike ride around the area. Christine showed a few of her favorite routes, one takes you out to the dunes and the beach another heads north and then loops around through the green spaces so common in this country. No matter how densely populated the cities are the land use planing in The Netherlands has been focused on preservation of green spaces. Little farms and common areas dominate the country side.

Watch as we speed down the high mountain passes of Peru. Dazzle at our ability to maneuver the twists and turns of the Incan roads. This awesome display of biking ability took us down over 8,000 feet through 25 miles of roadway, both pavement and dirt.

We were picked up from our hostel at 8:30 AM by our guides Luis and Henry for the start of our Pie-Peru trip. We drove for several hours on insane roads up to a pass over 15,000 feet above sea level. On the far side of the pass we broke out the bikes and started our 25 mile decent. We would plunge almost 8,000 feet down twisting turning roads, first paved and then dirt. Splashing across streams and dodging buses and trucks it was a jaw dropping excursion.