But when I woke up, once again, I felt pretty bad. Didn't sleep well, and probably didn't drink enough water before going to sleep. In fact, I slept past the Stayokay breakfast time (ends at 9:30 a.m.), but I wasn't so hungry anyway. Instead I rode the bike into town (Den Burg) and had coffee, a glass of water and this delicious apple pastry at a bakery. And I bought a strawberry frosted donut for later. I wanted to buy some snacks and water for my bike trip; I circled around the entire town before I could find something even resembling a market. When I did though, I was surprised to find a grocery store around the edge of town. It was huge! And had everything! So I bought a red bull, a bottle of water, and some Haribo gummy worms.
At the coast there was a big green hill separating the sea from the road. Here's a picture of it. There were sailboats in the distance too:
There was also a windmill in town. I saw several of these over the course of the day:
The trip to De Cocksdorp (funny name, right? I thought so, as did the only 2 native English speakers I met at the hostel) was much more difficult (note that I carefully avoid saying that it was "harder") than I had anticipated, with the wind and the not so great bike, even though the path was mostly flat. So much more difficult that I diverted from of the perimeter path to some of the interior roads as they were more direct. De Cocksdorp itself was unimpressive in my opinion, but this may have been due to my timing -- something like a parade seemed to be starting when I was leaving. I sat at a cafe and ordered what seemed to be the special (menu all in Dutch, waiter wasn't friendly enough to ask him what everything meant)...ended up being what looked like a split roll with melted cheese on it, fresh tomatoes, a slice of pineapple, some salami. Which is pretty delicious and satisfying for someone as hungry as I was. And ice cream for dessert. My eyes got extremely itchy during lunch, and I stupidly rubbed them. It took a good while before I was able to open them again, as they hurt so much.
It had been my intention to visit the ferry station near De Cocksdorp and ask about the possibility of a ferry ride from Texel to the next of the Frisian Islands, Vlieland, and then take a ferry to Haarlingen, on the mainland, and then a train to Grongingen. When I finally made it to the northernmost bit of the island and asked about this, I learned that it was not possible. So I continued riding to the lighthouse, and stopped for a minute to look at the nearby beach. Here is a picture of the lighthouse.
It cost money to go in so I opted against.
Because I could not easily find the beach on the west coast of the island, I took other roads back to Den Burg down the middle of the island, stopping briefly at the airport (it exists!) to watch some small planes taxi around a big grass field. Also watching this was a group of Chasidic Dutch teenagers.
On the way home, I saw a horse that looked like a cow. Here is a picture of it I took with my blackberry phone. Doesn't it look like a cow even though it is a horse???????:
After calculating the length of the whole trip on Google Maps I found it to be approximately 35 kilometers (approximately 22 miles). Not much, but again, the bike was heavy and kind of sucked.
Back in Den Burg I was very tired, took a shower, went downstairs to update blog and returned to my room to find that two people had moved in, and they were there! Australians from Perth! A couple named Cheyne and Julie! What a relief to talk to someone who speaks English as a first language! We spoke for a good while, laughed, shared some travel stories! They were using the same Lonely Planet Europe that I was using! We decided to go out for a bite to eat in Den Burg (they were only interested in dessert, but I was okay with this idea -- eating dessert instead of real food when really hungry could be pretty delicious) -- but after walking down every street in the town we learned that nothing was open, except for a little window called the "Snack Bar." They each ordered popsicles, and I got some sort of hot sandwich and fries. I still don't know what was in the sandwich, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't meat. It wasn't bad.
We returned to the hostel, had a few beers served by the Australian guy who works there, returned to our room (there was no one else in the 6 person room, which was nice, and for the first time I had a bottom bunk, oh, I also finally figured out a way to put the duvet (?) in the duvet cover not completely crooked, so I was much more comfortable than I had been the previous few nights), and said goodbye. I put my iPod in my ears and listened to an Intelligence Squared podcast from many many months ago debating Obama's economic policies. I fell asleep before it finished.
Just to go off the narrative for a bit, has anyone been listening to Robyn's new album Body Talk Part 1? I just can't get enough of it, thank golly I downloaded it before I left. And the new single from Body Talk Part 2 ("Hang With Me") is just as good. I hope that when I get back to the states she's as big time there as she deserves to be. If you haven't already, give it a listen, and also "Dancing on My Own", which I've heard is actually about being a ghost.
Kukl -- Holland (Latent)
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