Katwijk

Last Sunday a group of us headed out to Katwijk, a small coastal town 10km from Leiden. We hopped on our bikes around 1pm and started the trek to the beach. The housing shortage is clearly visible when you get outside of Leiden's center. This can be seen in the massive apartment buildings that ring the outskirts of the city to house the bulging population. Its nothing like the projects though, all the buildings are very nice surrounded by little ponds and what not. We also passed Rijnfront, which is a student housing complex that is located inside of an old refugee camp - very glad I didn't get housed there! The bike ride took about an hour to complete and was quite easy because the route to Katwijk is well posted. After passing some sheep and a windmill or two we were in Katwijk and decided to stop at Albert Heijn to pick up some snacks. After getting food and drink we headed to the beach and the DUNES! Between Katwijk and Den Haag stretches 25km of undeveloped dune and beach landscape that is well protected and criss-crossed with biking and running trails. We rode a little ways into the park and then parked our biked and climbed up one of the dunes.

The barbed-wire fence is to keep people from damaging animal habitat.

Climbing over the dune to reach the beach, quite a ascent.

Our group relaxing before the ride home.

The dunes are covered in grass and in the distance Den Haag is visible (or it could be Rotterdam).
How many Americans/Colombians/Irish does it take to tap a mini-keg?

All in all it was a great ride with a total mileage of about 25km, meaning it definitely required a nap afterward. Maybe our next mission will be to ride through all the dunes to Den Haag?