At the End of Day 1

 Hello! As I begin writing this, it is about 9:30pm here in Delft, and we have just concluded our first day here in the country! For today, we largely just biked around a bit to become familiar with the area and our bikes. In doing so though, we saw some really interesting things!

One of the first things we encountered was a large windmill, spinning slowly next to a canal. It's made of masonry and wood, and it seems to be quite old based on just looks. 

We continued along the canal for a while, and the ride was both gorgeous and an easy ride. On several occasions, we would pass by people in long boats rowing in tandem. I assume they were preparing for some kind of competitive sport, but I can't say for certain. Also in the canals, we saw children playing in the water (I didn't take any photos of this for hopefully obvious reasons), and at least one instance of a larger ship passing through, which it did quite effortlessly, I would like to point out.

                                                              

We later got to a bridge designed to rapidly swivel on a single column that spans the canal. Its design allows it to move so that larger vessels can pass, while being faster and perhaps more usable than a traditional drawbridge. The system seems to work somewhat like a construction crane, with one side being significantly longer than the other. Also notable is that the bridge itself only carries the weight of bikes and pedestrians, meaning that it is routinely subjected to less damage than would be the case with more typical roadways.

The next place we went was the Dutch Parliament building, where among other things there was litter in the waterway nearby, and a dragonfly that perched on my bike's brake cables for a while before taking off again when we left. 
 

The building itself was gorgeous too! It looks like a proper castle, and that's because it is! This structure was built largely during the 13th century, and is currently one of the oldest parliament buildings still in use. 

We then went and got dinner at a place called the "Little Pancake House" when translated to English. They had great pancakes (they're more or less a mix between crepes and tortillas in the US) that they served with or without toppings, depending on the order. They were gluten- and egg-free, and I believe we were told that they were in fact fully vegan, but I might be wrong about that one. 

I also ordered a limonade, which although it does translate exactly as expected means something completely different here! According to the internet, this was most likely a fruit syrup drink, but it tasted exactly like the caramel used to make caramel apples! It was pretty good but suuuper sweet, so I probably won't be getting it again anytime soon.

After getting dinner, we went to the beach and got ice cream, neither of which I took photos during, although I considered it at the beach. I decided against it though because I figured it would probably be rude to photograph people in their bathing suits to put them on the internet, niche area or otherwise. As for the ice cream, I just didn't think to! It was pretty good though.

We then went back to our hotel, and on the way we stopped to look at the eternal flame world peace monument. Each stone placed around the base of the monolith (which has a small flame burning inside) represents a country. There are almost 200 of them there including the USA. You can't see it because it seems to have mostly broken away, but the US rock is just below that bright blue one on the bottom left.

In addition to the monument, there was also a large building nearby intended as a place for nations to diplomatically settle disputes. Apparently it was originally built by the Romans during an invasion, but it was since torn down and replaced with the current version, funded by some wealthy person several decades ago.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel for the night. Along the way, I was able to appreciate the cycling infrastructure and the area around us pretty thoroughly. One area we passed through had graffiti painted all along one wall, for instance, which while not really directly related to the infrastructure still shows that there are some things that stay constant wherever you may go. Many of the bike routes follow along the same path as car routes, and in some cases the two directly overlap, sometimes even with trams on rails! Additionally, the vast majority of both roads and paths seemed to be paved with brickwork masonry rather than asphalt, which is very much the standard in places like the USA. Although this is certainly not always the case (especially for pedestrian walkways), it is still quite interesting to me that this is how the Dutch decided to develop their infrastructure. Additionally, although there are many signals dictating how cyclists are expected to behave, they appear to operate much more akin to pedestrian crossings in the US, which is to say that they are used when convenient and generally ignored when not, which can certainly cause some confusion for the foreign cyclist if they had no insight prior to entering the country. Similarly concerning if found without prior knowledge (much as was the case for myself) is the fact that moto-scooters seem to be permitted onto many if not all bike routes! Being by far both the loudest and fastest vehicles on these routes, it is a point of personal curiosity what happened to allow this phenomenon, especially because the American counterpart is very strict, stating that "No Motor Vehicles" may enter bike path territory. 

Many of these questions I expect will be answered tomorrow, when we will be exploring the Delft University campus, or at some later time. If I prove to be wrong, I will likely elect to perform some personal research into the matter to see what I can find.

Until tomorrow!