Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/226.html

We're going to Belgium!

We've been looking forward to this for months. Not to see the country, but to spend time with our very good friends, Eva and Thomas. We first met them two years ago while we were visiting Toronto. We really bonded with them during that time and we've been counting down the days till we could see them again, this time in their hometown of Leuven.

Hallo! We are in Belgium!

From Paris, it was an easy three-hour ride to get to their place. As we got closer, I got really excited when I saw the signs for "Leuven". This is because every time we meet anyone from Belgium, I always tell them "We have friends from Belgium, they live in Leuven", saying it as if I had actually been there. Well, now I can!

We arrived to their place like excited little kids, it was soooo nice seeing them again! We really missed them! And we brought them gifts - chocolates from France (which were actually Belgian chocolates) as well as the rain which has been following us since Guatemala in September 2013. You're welcome!

First things, first. Need to get rid of some the weight up top.

Ta dah! Now I am presentable to the Belgians!

I don't really know much about Belgium. I know Belgian chocolates, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Belgian beer and Belgian waffles... and that's it.

I asked our friends what else there is to know about Belgium and they mentioned some obscure musicians. Also something about the French stealing the recipe for Belgian Fries and calling them French Fries. So... just food, basically!

The Belgians baked a lactose-free cake and threw Neda a surprise birthday party! How nice!

And presents!!!

We used Eva and Thomas' address to ship all the gear that we've bought online to replace all the stuff that's been falling apart and breaking the last 6 months. They wrapped up all of our shipments like presents! haha!

Third birthday on the road. I can't believe we've been wandering around for so long...!

 

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Communicator installation party! Whohoo!

One of the packages we got was from Sena. Someone from the company contacted us through our blog and asked how our Sena SMH10 comms were doing. I mentioned that we loved them, but they are suffering from wear-and-tear from almost three years of daily use. So they mentioned they would ship us replacements as well as their new action camera. WOW! and COOL! Can't wait to try them out!

Leuven is most-well known for being the home of Stella Artois, so we took a tour!

Artois was merged with a few companies over the years, including Anheuser-Busch in the US, and they bought Labatts in Canada, making the parent company, AmBev, the largest beer company in the world. And they are headquartered right here in Leuven!

Stella is not really our speed, we tend to like darker beers, but that didn't stop us from trying the free samples!

Eva and Thomas mentioned that it is unseasonably cold and wet this spring in Leuven. My eyes shifted side to side guiltily... But the weather did clear up and we spent the day walking around their city.

Tour of downtown Leuven

Leuven Town Hall, looks like it was made of Lego!

Rows upon rows of statues on the Leuven Town Hall

 

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We decide to take another stab at Belgian Beers, this time at a pub downtown

Knowing that we like darker beers, Thomas ordered us some Westvleteren Trappist Ale. Holy smokes, it was good! Had a dark, fruity taste, with a champagne-like carbonation to it.

Westvleteren is now my favorite trappist ale!

There are only eleven monasteries in the world that brew Trappist beer. Six of them are in Belgium. What makes a beer Trappist is that it must be brewed entirely within the monastery walls, not be made for profit and have strict quality control. This makes the output sparse and the resulting bottles very difficult to obtain and thus expensive. Customers who drive to the monastery in Vleteren are limited to how many cases they are able to buy and their license plates are recorded so they are only able to buy once every 60 days.

The beer is *that* good!

Here's to Abbey Beers!

St. Peter's Church

Clock on St. Peter's Church

 

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Eva and Thomas took us to the best Belgain Waffle place in Leuven. A food stand in town!

A real Belgian Waffle has to be eaten plain. That means no whipped cream, no strawberries, just by itself. Also, it's preferable that you eat it on the street and not in a sit-down restaurant with cutlery and waiters. We are eager to eat waffles like authentic Belgians!

Smack Lick!

Leuven is in the Flemish-speaking region of Belgium called Flanders. So we have been learning some Flemish words while we are here in Belgium, specifically all the food words. Our favorite word is the expression for "Bon Appetit", in Flemish, it's "Smakelijk", but it's pronounced (roughly) Smack-Lick!

Such a funny sounding word: Smack-Lick!

Eva and Thomas don't realize it, but we have been using Smack-Lick randomly in our conversations now. Just out of the blue, I'll tap on the communicator and exclaim, "Smack-Lick" then turn it off. Smack-Lick.

These boys are kicking the Smack-Lick out of that ball

This strange statue of a giant bug impaled on a giant needle is one of the most famous symbols of Leuven

 

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Relax-time: Crocheting and Needlepoint

Staying with Eva and Thomas was so easy. Having done their own multi-month trip abroad, they intuitively knew that we were burnt out from traveling, so they knew exactly what we needed - namely Internet for me, and a kitchen for Neda and lots of relax time in their house.

Thomas enjoys cooking almost as much as Neda!

Eva and Thomas finished their trip just over a year ago and I had so many questions about how they were settling into their new life, as they are one of the few couples we know who have lived like nomads and then re-entered their old life again. It was apparent that their wanderlust had not dissipated at all. In fact, they were continuing their minimalist existence, trying not to accumulate too many possessions so they could be light and free for future travels.

I saw them as an ideal template for the way we would like to be when our trip is over as well.

Eva and Thomas take us to an amusement park! FUN!!!

Like I said, our friends knew exactly what we needed.

A nervous smile beside me, and how I know our friends really like us!

Thomas is deathly afraid of heights, but he bravely volunteered to accompany me on the Dalton Terror ride, which lifts us several stories above the park and then drops us, letting us hurtling to ground at the speed of gravity.

You can probably tell by this picture, I am not afraid of heights.
Smack-Lick!

 

[mixedup]

Looks like a Westy 8 you had? If you get a chance, try the Westvleteren 12 as well. Amazing beer. And stop at Brasserie Cantillon if you end up in Brussels!!!!

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/227.html

We've been at Eva and Thomas' place for over a week now and we're loving it!

We really miss the company of other people, and hanging out with our friends is really filling that need to be social. Meeting new people on the road has been amazing, but being on a trip this long we are struggling to find balance and it's comforting to spend time with friends who we don't need to explain who we are, where we've gone, what our personalities are like (one of us is lazy and other one has more energy that she knows what to do with). Sometimes it's just nice to curl up on the couch and pick some crappy movies by random on Netflix... and then razz each other endlessly about it...

P.S. Don't pick the movie "Parallels" and watch it with your friends. You'll *NEVER* hear the end of it. Ever.

Eva wheels her motorcycle out of the BatCave. Our bikes have remained parked for the whole week!

Watching Eva do some pre-riding-season maintenance

While we take our computers... er, motorcycles in for service

The service guys at the local BMW dealership knew us already even before we walked in. They follow us on our blog! We talked to them a little about our trip. Then they shook our hands and wished us a nice trip and handed us our bill. No discount for storytelling...

On the way, we tried out the new communicators that Sena shipped to us. The 20S is an upgrade to what we had before and although we didn't have enough time to give them a full run-through, we're blown away by how crystal clear the sound quality is. They've really improved the noise reduction from the SMH10, which wasn't bad to begin with! Thank you, Sena!

We're also really happy that we got most of our gear refreshed, getting it all shipped to the RideDOT.com European Headquarters in Belgium (and you thought only NATO had their headquarters here!) We just need to get Neda's seat fixed still. Finding an upholsterer in Leuven willing to work on it is proving difficult.

 

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I finally get to see Speculoos in person!

A couple of years ago when Thomas and Eva were staying with us in Toronto, I asked them what foods they had which were particular to Belgium. He described these spiced biscuits that you soaked in tea or coffee, then spread them over bread. It's called speculoos and now every morning, I got to see Thomas do his ritual dunk and spread.

And then in the grocery store I see pre-dunked and spreadable Speculoos!

When you stay with friends this long, we're not really guests anymore. So we did the room-mate thing and did some grocery shopping for them. Settling into Belgian domestic life, the most exciting thing for us is that there is a new grocery store called "Albert Heijn" that opened up around the corner. They're the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands and they are expanding into Belgium. Eva and Thomas pointed out all the new Dutch products on the shelves that they wanted to try. The shelves were a little empty, probably because they were a brand new store.

We kind of miss all these little neighbourhood details that fly under the wheels of our nomadic existence.

Because our roomies are vegetarian, Thomas attempts to make vegetable jerky.
I like to call it Vagirky. Because it sounds a little dirty...

The vagirky was put in the oven and baked until it should have been chewy, but instead it turned out crispy and dry. No Smack-Licking the dry Vagirky.



I thought about why we get along with Eva and Thomas so well. A lot of it is that we have so much in common: addicted to travel, motorcycles, relaxed attitude to life. But also, there's a sense of modesty to them that we've found is common to a lot of Belgians.

Belgium is a funny little country. It shares borders with France, Germany and the Netherlands and each of the Belgian regions are split along the language lines: Dutch Flanders and French Wallonia, similar to English/French Canada. But I don't think they lack a cohesive national identity here as much as that they an understated nationalism, similar to the modest Canadian culture that we grew up in.

And Eva and Thomas are just cool people to be around. I don't know if they truly realize how special they are to us.

What's going on here?

Eva works as a content writer for a PR company and one of her clients is a recreational equipment retailer. Each quarter the company puts out a glossy magazine/catalog and Eva had an idea of including our travels in the next issue as a lifestyle/human interest piece. We initially thought it would just be a print interview and some accompanying pictures from our blog, but to our surprise a camera crew showed up to do a live interview for a video supplement on the company website!

Cool! We felt like celebrities!

Fireside chat with RideDOTNeda.

 

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In addition to the interview, the crew got some background shots of our gear. This was getting fancier by the minute!

And then the video shoot went outdoors to include shots of our motorcycles! Thomas led us out to some scenic spots in Leuven

While we wait for the camera crew to set up, Neda tries to sell Eva her motorcycle: "Only 80,000 kms! Never dropped. Much..."

Making movies is boring for the actors. Gotta wait for all the cameras to be set up. So I went around and took lots of pictures

Setting up the shot

Because of my amateur video-editing attempts, I already knew how much footage needs to be shot to make a short video, but it was eye-opening to watch the professionals and see how much set-up time is required to get the best lighting, framing, etc. Compared to my seat-of-my-pants-pull-the-camera-out-of-the-tankbag-and-hit-record way of shooting video...

 

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And then the video shoot goes mobile for some action footage!

Thomas and Eva led us and the crew on their bikes to some country roads where footage could be taken of us riding our motorcycles. Wow! All this for such a short video! I was so curious what the end product would look like now!

Tim, the director mounts a miniature Action Camera on Thomas' bike to get shots of us from the front

I felt like a member of the Royal Family, riding around with a motorcycle escort in front and a chase vehicle behind us!

The stakes get higher when a drone was brought out. OMG!

At the end of the day, the cameraman shows us some of the raw footage that they've shot. It looks SOOOO good! I can't wait to see how they put it all together. Eva said that it will be a few months before it'll be finished and launched concurrently with the magazine article.

So it turns out it's not actually a short web video. There was so much time put into this and so many different cameras involved that we are turning this into a 12-part mini-series that will air on Netflix. We will be calling KTM and asking them for free motorcycles for our journey just so that we can capture them turning us down on camera...

This will be the cover of our Blu-ray Disc.

After a long day of shooting, we ride back to Leuven with the rest of the RideDOT.com European film crew

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/228.html

It's a strange thing to glance at your GPS and see negative numbers for your elevation. But that's what you get when you're riding through the Netherlands. Or is it Holland? Dutchland?

We've pulled ourselves away from the Belgian Haven of Eva and Thomas' home and rode out into the warming European spring. The sun is shining and the sky is blue and for the first time in a while, it feels like we're finally ahead of the weather instead of being chased away by it.

Riding past dams, dikes and levees of the Delta Works project

Being very flat, the Netherlands is not really a motorcycle destination. About 25% of Holland is below sea-level and more than half of the country is in danger of being flooded! There's been a long history of flood-control here, with the first dikes being built in the 9th century. For scenic reasons, we were advised to ride along the coast and through the Delta Works project in the south-west part of the country. It's basically a high-tech version of those first dikes, also helping to reclaim vast areas of land from the encroaching North Sea.

I was surprised to learn that this land reclamation is quite critical because the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world by land mass. There are more people squeezed in here per square km than in India!

Accelerating the population is similar to accelerating a motorcycle. Except that you clump the Dutch instead...

There are 35 people who live in this one windmill alone

Like other countries in this part of the world, I only knew a little bit about the Netherlands. I knew about the little boy who stuck his finger in the dike, and that everyone here smokes pot and wears wooden clogs. I didn't know why this place was also called Holland and why the official language was called Dutch, and not Hollandaise, or Netherlang.

I did know that there are a lot of windmills in the Netherlands.

Hanging out with the windmills at Kinderdijk

Speaking of population density, the densest concentration of windmills is in the town of Kinderdijk, so we rode there to see them up close. I always thought windmills were used to grind grain or something similar. Boy, was I mistaken.

At Kinderdijk, 7 meters below sealevel, all sorts of flood-management techniques have been implemented throughout the centuries: dikes, sluices, etc., however these all proved ineffective against the ever-rising waters. In the 1700s nineteen windmills were constructed to help pump water away from the low-lying areas in Kinderdijk. A hundred years later, these windmills were supplanted by newer-technology steam pumps which were then converted to electrically powered ones in the 1900s.

Today, the nineteen windmills at Kinderdijk have been restored and mainly serve as a tourist attraction. They've been designated as a UNESCO site, so once again, we are on the Gringo Trail in Europe.

These guys don't seem to mind all this water

Windmill Cruise

 

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Believe it or not, these are Canada Geese!

Back on the road, we pass by the Netherlands' Military Missile Defense silos

We're on our way to The Hague, about an hour south of Amsterdam. Mike and his wife, Bua are British ex-pats living here in the Netherlands. Mike's been in contact with me via the blog and has offered us a place to stay as we ride through which was super-nice of him. He was actually riding in Croatia last summer while we were in Pula, but our bikes hadn't arrived yet and we were still taking care of Neda's mom so we were unable to meet him.

Our hosts in The Hague, Mike and Bua

Mike is quite the avid motorcycle traveler. We talked a lot about the places he had ridden to and he gave us some great tips on riding through Scandinavia, which is what we're looking forward to later on this summer. I loved hearing about the Netherlands from an ex-pat's viewpoint, since they often see things differently than people who have lived here their whole lives. Both Mike and Bua had interesting perspectives on life in Holland after moving here from England.

Windmill at Keukenhof.

We happened to be in The Hague right around the time that the Keukenhof Gardens were open. Keukenhof is one of the world's largest flower gardens, it's in the city of Lisse just 40 minutes away from where we are staying. Neda *LOVES* flowers and Keukenhof is only open from mid-March to Mid-May so it was by luck that we were here at the perfect time to catch the flowers in bloom. Unfortunately Mike had to go to work, but Bua volunteered to take us.

 

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Indigenous peoples of the Netherlands

Yellow flowers

There are over 7 million bulbs in bloom this year covering the 32 hectares at Keukenhof, with 800 varieties of Tulips all over the gardens. Neda was in heaven, reveling in the multitude of colours around her and literally stopping to smell the flowers and read all the informational signs next to them. I was going to label all these pictures with the proper names of the flowers, but I don't know anything about them... You're more than welcome to e-mail me and help me identify them!

I'm not so much into flowers, but they do make for great pictures. We're really happy that there are clear blue skies for us to walk around under!

Some people take their photography very seriously!

The gardens were very crowded for a weekday! More than a million people visit during the two-months they are open

Red flower with yellow centre

 

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The bridal exhibit does big business here at Keukenhof. This was the Love Wall,
where visitors from all around the world can proclaim their love by writing on tags

his pen is... what? Don't leave it hanging like that, Lotta...

Big yellow flowers with small blue ones beside it. Also purple sticks.

White flowers. And a yellow and black bee

Need a windmill right here to help lower the water level under this bridge...

 

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More yellow, purple and blue flowers

White and brown goat. Neda wearing a blue sweater.

Yellow flower about to eat a smaller orange flower

Love birds

Blogs and clogs

 

[kiwi]

Awesome. Thanks for the update.

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/229.html

Amsterdam is only about an hour away from the Hague, so we headed out for the morning. The sky has reverted back to its dull grey colour as we ride the highway to the capital city of the Netherlands.

Scored some free parking at the old centre

We made a beeline straight to the old centre of Amsterdam, the part that everyone visits. Having never been here, I was very curious to see the place that not only legalized prostitution and marijuana, but put it on display in the stores on the main street. Our first impression: there sure are a lot of canals here...

There are over 100 kms of canals in Amsterdam...

... and tons of bridges. This is one of 1,500 bridges in the city
Amsterdam is often called the Venice of the North.

Boats seem to be a good way to get around here. Any other mode of transportation in the Netherlands?

Bicycles, of course!

Along with windmills, canals and tulips, Holland is known as the nation of bicyclists. About a third of the population list the bicycle as their primary mode of transport. We saw so many bicycles traveling around the city as well as locked up to railings that stretched along the sidewalks.

 

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Those not old enough for their own bicycle still trundled around on two wheels

Also a horse-drawn carriage. For the tourists.

The infamous red light district

I'd heard so much about the Red Light District but when we got there, we were so surprised at how not-seedy it seemed. Non-descript buildings housing sex shops and bawdy houses are only distinguished by garish signs and the scantily (if that) clad women behind the full-length windows tapping on the glass as you walk by.

Just so you didn't know where you were, the lights in this area have red bulbs.

Feeling spacey!

Another thing we had heard of was Coffee Houses. But coffee is not the main item on their menus... These are cafes where you can order marijuana from the menu, sit down and have a smoke or munch on a Space Cake. All out in the open! Coming from very repressed North America, it seemed so very strange!

But again, very un-seedy and normal-looking from the outside.

Amsterdam turned out to be quite a pretty place to walk around. At least during the day. We only spent a few hours there in the morning and headed back to The Hague in the afternoon.

 

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We wanted to try some native Dutch food: Herring Sandwiches!

In Holland, they love eating herring that's been salted and served raw. You can have it by itself or it's also eaten with raw onions and on a hot dog bun. This was delicious and cheap! They also say it's a great hangover cure.

Mike prepares our transportation for the evening

Later on, we are told that we need to blend in with the Dutch, so we trade in our motorcycles for bicycles! Bua is taking us to visit the nearby village of Delft on two (non-motorized) wheels. Because bicycling is so ingrained in Dutch culture, all the streets have dedicated bicycle lanes that have their own markings that denote right-of-way - very important when crossing an intersection!

It's a 40-minute ride to Delft and at all times during the ride there was always a canal by our side

I was not doing very well with all this exercise. Thank goodness Holland is so flat!!!

Delft Town Hall

Bua is very fit and waited frequently and patiently for us to catch our breaths

 

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Window shopping. No prostitutes or marijuana in these stores.

Renovations to the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in Delft

Bicycling in Delft

What a beautiful town! Lots of canals and bridges like Amsterdam.

We thought Amsterdam was pretty, but Delft was even more charming. Mainly because it was less crowded and we were able to see more of it since we were on bicycles. What a great idea! Too bad the sun was setting as it was getting dark and cold, so we had to head back.

As if the canals weren't enough to remind us we were in Holland, here's a windmill!