2 50+ mi bike rides in 3 days, tour de France brace yourself!!

Sunday Feb 12: so yeah woke up at like 7 am and had breakfast with dirk. He put on the radio, which was in dutch of course but he told me that Whitney Houston had been found dead in her hotel room that morning (or maybe last night considering it was in the US) so that was a bit of a shocker. So then the radio played some songs by her, of course. But we ate kinda quickly, and because my water bottle had been freezing the past few days, I came up with this ingenious idea to boil water and then pour it into the bottle. Then I said my thank yous and good bye and then I was off by 8:30 am. I rode quick around the center of arnhem but obviously nothing was open given the time and day. So I just saw the main outer ring road which had one way lanes and in the middle was a grassy area with fountains, and there were several of these fountains in a row so I thought, hey that's quite pretty, wasn't expecting that from a small town lol. Then I rode around the shopping area and center but then headed off. I was doing well with not getting lost and then I saw some train tracks that I followed which brought me to nijmegen, so I rode around that center for a bit. Apparently this is the oldest city in the Netherlands! It was nearly 11 am so the town was just waking up, but still not a lot of people on the streets and the maps were a bit awful so I got lost trying to find a museum to go to, but I eventually found the pedestrian directional signs so I just followed it till I got somewhere lol. I ended up at the valkoff museum which has archeological stuff and old and contemporary paintings. So they had lots of Roman artifacts, and even pre history finds and a reconstruction of a tribal hut and stuff. Not a lot was in English though, just a select few, but I knew what a lot of things were, like the religious treasury stuff, the dull protestant section and the decorative catholic one, but like with the paintings, a lot of them were from the golden age and of local landscapes so it would have been nice to read about them. Then they had 60s pop art and featured Andy Warhol among others, it was saying how american artists really paved the way during that time and had an influence on English artists as well as other European ones. There also was an exhibit, in English, that compared the Roman community in nijmegen to todays life. Like for instance, they explained how Romans traveled across the land and then compared it to using a gps system in a car today. So it was a bit for kids but a cute idea, and they also had archeological finds in each section as well (the permanent collection also had a bunch of Roman stuff but not much had English labels). So I left the museum at 1 pm and quickly went to the adjacent park which had some castle ruins (barbarossa ruins) and continued on my way to eindhoven. Unfortunately I didn't recall which way I came from and thus which way to go back to following the signs. So I pretty much circled the town over and over again for a while. I then saw a sign with "fietsplat" on it so I thought it was telling me this is the way to the bicycle lanes so I follow it until I discovered that sign meant "bicycle parking". So what a stupid waste of time that was. Then I found the outer ring road but I used Google maps to just point me in the right direction, but it was a real confusing intersection, with lots of turn offs, so I kept choosing the wrong one. Well by process of elimination I finally found the right road to follow, so I followed it to grave (which I actually saw signs for earlier but for some reason, didn't follow them!) So yeah after leaving the nijmegen area I did ok with deciding which routes to follow. I mainly went through towns and stuff (uden, veghel etc), in the bike lanes along busy roads, so that sucked a bit, but at least it was straightforward. After riding for a while i finally saw signs for eindhoven, which was farther than I thought, so I was a bit annoyed cause it was cold and dark by then. By the way every time i drank from my water bottle it tasted like plastic! So yeah, not exactly appetizing! Once I got to the area of eindhoven, traffic picked up quite a lot. It was actually a bigger area than I thought! My hosts lived in the center, which was convenient for exploring the next day but the whole time I kept thinking, am I there yet lol. When I really got close to the main center area, I saw this artwork of a giant bowling ball and bowling pins, in the middle of a busy intersection. Ive seen plenty of roundabouts with art in the middle of them, but this was by far the strangest! But anyway i found the building easily and then arrived, 7:50 pm after riding 57.98 (a new personal record for me!) max 20.5 avg 7.3. My hosts were 2 boys similar to my age, joost (dutch) and Chris (English, from London). Joost was going to be attending a star wars party soon and he never really seen the movies so he was trying to do a movie marathon to become knowledgable with the story, but he was only on episode 4 when I arrived (and that was what he started with, not ep 1) and it wasn't holding his attention lol. So they had eaten but they said i could eat whatever i wanted, but they had a very studentesque kitchen. Only cup noodles and cookies! But I ate literally one of everything. I just went through whatever they had! Well not at first but they were really laid back and I could see they really didn't mind what I ate, and their lives consist of hosting couchsurfing guests (their wifi password was csparadise!), so once i saw it was okay, I went for it! I even ate a slice of cooking sugar, just cause I thought it was candy lol but when I put it in my mouth and it was rock hard I asked joost what it was and he said for cooking with, not eating!! Then Chris invited another couchsurfer who apparently sent him a message asking to stay the night but he didn't respond in time so she booked a hotel which she couldnt cancel, so he said well then at least come hang out with us. So she came by and brought cheesecake cause there was some bday party of her friend she went to and made this cake so she brought the left overs cause she was flying back to Romania the next morning and couldn't bring that on the plane. So Score for me, I ate nearly the whole thing!! So the 4 of us talked for several hours, joost said they get a lot of requests because the eindhoven airport has cheap European flights, so they literally host people every few days but usually just for the night. I really liked joost and Chris, they were fun to talk to, and they kept teasing me about eating so much cause I really was just nonstop all night long! Joost told me about how the Phillips company is originally from eindhoven (and all this time I thought they were American!) And he said the old factory is now a museum which is across the street from them although currently under renovation. I told them my tentative plans for the rest of my trip through mainland Europe and joost told me that Luxembourg had a lot of scary hills! Then i asked "are there a lot of cyclepaths in Belgium?" And then he started telling me stories about child molestors from Belgium and other crazy people he heard about on the news but then he asked "why do you want to know about psychopaths in Belgium!?!" And I said "not psychopaths, CYCLEpaths!!" Lmao. And with the Romanian girl we had a long discussion about the cold war, they told me the history behind it and how Europeans were treated when the countries were more communistic and stuff. Then we talked about the space race and she asked me if I knew the name of the first person in space and I said no and she said most Americans would say Neil Armstrong, even though he was only the first person to land on the moon. She was saying that Americans don't know that Russian guy, I forgot his name, who was the first person in space cause we weren't taught it, we were always drilled with neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin because of the rivalry America had with Russia about sending people to space. And i said I bet most Russians don't know who Neil Armstrong is either! So we talked about recent European history with wars and stuff. I really didn't know anything about that type of stuff so it was good to hear! A few hours and lots of cake and cookies later, the girl left and I started getting ready for bed. I was hoping to see Walter actually cause he lives in tillburg which is close enough but I arrived too late and then he had work the next morning, so that didn't end up ever happening :-( I asked joost if I could make pancakes in the morning and he said yes, but I had to wake up early cause he needed to be at work at 8 am. So I packed my bag and talked with Chris a bit more who was going to be up late writing a report for work, and then went to bed!
Monday Feb 13: so joost came and woke me up at 7:15 ish cause I told him I would only need like 10 min to make the pancakes. I forgot that pancakes in this part of the world are actually crepes so I asked if he had baking powder and he said no only baking soda. So I threw that in the mix but the batter was very thick, so I just kept adding water till it got more liquidy, but it was taking a lot of time so I was rushing to get them cooked. So as a result, some came out burnt, undercooked and ok (although this was the least amount of them!) And joost ended up being late for work! So I felt bad but he didn't get fired lol. And Chris left for work too so I was alone but I didn't go back to sleep, I cleaned everything in the kitchen. Then I left and went to the tourist info and of course got a little walking tour of the area. There were 2, the old town and one all about Phillips. So I did the old town first. I walked along the "longest st in the Netherlands" which is the nightlife scene. I know the streets in the Netherlands are short but this one wasn't really long, I think maybe the leaflet meant in a city/town and not like a main road connecting cities. Well I walked around for a bit, there was a nice little river by a convent in a park that still had some snow and ice. This led to the canal and busy roads. The core of eindhoven didn't have anything too spectacular to see, and I got lost on the grand berg and klein berg streets, but found my way back to the old center. Also saw some old churches (duh) and a mosque, I think it was pretty recent though. So after walking around and seeing the museums (from outside) and the historic builidings, I then did the Phillips tour, which took me to the big modern buildings, the old factory by Chris and joost, and some other stuff. I had wanted to Leave kinda quick,  cause I was spending my first night in Belgium and I wasn't familiar with the signs, roads, lines etc. And the Phillips tour didn't last very long so I was able to leave at a normal(ish) time. Oh I also learnt that those giant bowling pins and ball were contemporary art by a local. So I forget but I Think it was around 2:30 pm that I left. Leaving eindhoven was not much of an issue I followed Google maps instead of the cycle signs since I was cutting through Belgium. I made better time than I imagined because riding through Belgium was a piece of cake! The Belgium border sign wasn't as elaborate as I thought it would be, definitely not like the welcome to the fabulous las Vegas sign! The land was flat and there were cycle lanes following the main road, so that put all my worries at Ease. There were no red bicycle direction signs like in the Netherlands though, so I just followed the main road, which wasn't busy at all anyway. I literally just kept going straight on it, and only getting a little turned around in one town, but quickly found my way. I had a slight panic attack cause I thought I lost my phone but I had just put it in my coat pocket and not my pants one as usual lol. and after all that time i spent in the netherlands, i saw no roadkill, and my first few hours in belgium, i saw one. too bad it was somebodys cat! but yeah to sum up the netherlands: i really enjoyed the people, they were friendly, and so open minded and forward thinking. the landscape got a bit monotonous being polder field and canal/river the whole time and no mountains, but i shouldnt really complain about that! plus the water was always nice to see (until it got frozen) because it always had waterfowl in it. but that really did it for the wildlife, but i guess i didnt go at the best time of year! although there just isnt really a lot of natural land left, at least on the holland side of the country. and the cycle paths and network was really good, although not perfect, but still better than anything the US or UK can devise. but i really enjoyed myself! So my hosts lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere! It was a village called neeroeteren in the masseik region, closer to maastricht than eindhoven. I followed a canal until it got dark and they lived on the other side of it, a few blocks in. So I didn't know exactly where a bridge was (and it was esp hard to see in the dark) but when I checked the map it said I was just past their place so i turned around and found a bridge, crossed over and then made my way to theirs. so my hosts were a nice couple named patrick and anne marie. they had a 20 year old son but he didnt speak english so they had to translate for him (usually its the other way around lol). they have a daughter who is my age and she likes to travel but she wasnt at home cause she is at university so i stayed in her room. but she is the one who introduced them to couchsurfing, and patrick likes to travel so he was open to the idea. anne marie was too, as a host, but she only likes to visit spain where they have a house there. but i arrived at 6:15 pm, rode 31.46 mi, max 17.4, avg 7.5 and my time was 4:09 on the bike. and this is to be continued as I am now falling asleep!