4 JOURS À VÉLO POUR REJOINDRE AMSTERDAM

Ready for a new adventure? This time I'm going to Lille Amsterdam. For the first time, I'm going without Bréhuen because he's starting a mechanical training cycle that started last week. However, I'm not going alone, I'm going with three friends, including Perrine who had also started the trip with us when we left with Bréhuen for our Europe tour. And I'm also going with Romane and Anna who don't know the bike trip so it's going to be a discovery for them too. I tried to make a fairly light configuration, although I have to wear things that I usually share with Bréhuen. In particular, the hot water, the tent, the bike tools. So I still tried to make it light with just the two yellow backpacks and the rack pack. And I also had to make a big compromise in terms of the video because we had quite bulky equipment. And there, in fact, I opted for this little GoPro which, as a result, has a slightly poorer quality than our video camera, of course. But it still allows you to travel lightly and to be able to capture this journey. So here we go, I'm going to join my friends and then head to Amsterdam. Let's go! It's perfect, this little canal. But it stops all of a sudden. We're still trying. And the little option is the stairs. Perfect. Turn around. In fact, we were just bad, it was enough to take the bridge and cross. It was written on my GPS, but it's Bréhuen, normally, the navigation, I'm not used to it. But that's it, let's go! So that's it, we're crossing the little French-Belgian border. So there, it's France. And on the left, it's Belgium. So when we cross the canal, we arrive in Belgium. We passed by this beautiful place and we were very lucky because we asked the little man who was turning his blouse if we could possibly sleep on a small plot of his land. And he said, yes, I'm going to ask my wife, she's so cute. So they welcomed us in their garden, they're so nice. They gave us pears and then we talked a little bit. So now we're going to be great. It's even better turned than in a campsite. And the view is so nice. New day, direction the Netherlands. Here we are, just a few kilometers from Bruges, the first little tourist stop of the morning. So here we come quietly along the water, through the canal. Access to the big city is really well arranged and very quiet by bike. It's super nice in Belgium and I imagine it will be the same in the Netherlands. So here's the next step, Bruges. For those who don't know Bruges, it's really a very cute and very, very nice city. With lots of brick buildings and lots of canals. It's a bit like a mini Belgian Venice. It's super nice, so I recommend this destination to you. That's it, we did about twenty kilometers after Bruges and we reached the coast. And we have a small portion in a natural reserve. It's super nice, we walk along the dunes and it's very wild. And then it's great for cycling, it's a bit of a bike road here. We're starting to see a lot of cyclists, so it's great, under the sun. Yeah! I'm on this beautiful bike path that we just crossed the border. Here we are. Hello! We end the step by a small ferry crossing with the bikes. In fact, there is a tunnel for cars to cross. And for pedestrians and bikes, it's a small ferry crossing. It's our hosts who welcomed us that night, who explained that to us. There are boats every half hour, but here, since it's Sunday, it's every hour. So no luck, we arrived two minutes after the departure of the boat. So now we're waiting an hour, but the weather is nice, it's nice. So we're here right now. And then we cross like that. And we'll probably do another 15 kilometers behind to sleep around Middelburg. Magnificent parking! Let's go! We pass by chance by the small town of Middelburg. It was on our road, we didn't know it. And we see that we are in the Netherlands because we are starting to have a lot of bikes. So much so that in this city it is forbidden from 11 to 18 hours to cycle. Because there are really a lot, a lot. But here it is not yet 11 o'clock, so we take advantage of it. Today we are heading to Rotterdam. And there are lots of islets on our road. And in fact, each islet is connected by bridges. So it's not boats crossing, every time it's bridges. And in fact, it's again very, very well arranged for bikes. And we have almost a path just as wide as for cars. And it has never been so pleasant to cross bridges. Because every time we had a bit of bad experiences with Bremen. Between the bridge of Normandy or the bridge of Saint Nazaire. That we didn't even cross by bike, we took a shuttle. And so here, really, long live the Netherlands for the bike. Because it's all easy and very pleasant. So great. And there is not too much wind, so very nice. And yesterday we finished the step in the small town of Briel. We slept at the campsite and we arrived at night. So we discover the city this morning. And it's really a cute city. With small pedestrian streets and surrounded by canals. So it's very pretty. So again a nice surprise. Because we didn't know at all the cities we were going to cross here in the Netherlands. And so it's very nice. Often these are really very clean cities. Everything is well cared for, the grass is well grown. It makes you think of the Troubadour. It's funny. So here we are heading to Rotterdam which is only 20 km away. And there we will take a train that will take us to our final destination, Amsterdam. I'm scared. After this funny underground bridge, here we are. Teleported to the center of Rotterdam. And so here we are heading to the station to take the train. We'll see how it goes. Here we are in the train. It wasn't that easy actually. I thought it would be very easy here. That it would be very adapted. But there are still small steps there. Well nothing violent but to get on the bikes. And otherwise there was room for our bikes here. But not much more room either. So here we take a train that doesn't even take an hour to go from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. A direct train. And we paid an additional 10 euros for the bikes. And you should still know that bikes are prohibited in trains from 4 pm to 6.30 pm. So rush hour in fact per week. And we arrived just before 4 pm. So we really had to hurry to catch the train at 3.50 pm. So it was a bit of a race. But now it's good. We are in the train. We have our tickets. So that's it. Direction Amsterdam. We are in Amsterdam!