At the time we went, Iceland was one of the few countries in the world that allowed vaccinated foreign visitors. All that was needed was proof of vaccination – not even a pre-entry COVID test. The fact that most people were vaccinated meant that most people were not wearing masks in the city, but this was before even the Delta variant – it seems like so long ago now.

I had been itching to go travel somewhere since the pandemic began, and this was a very welcome nudge towards normalcy. Flying with Icelandair was the same as before: the seat and leg room is pretty comfortable, but there’s no food included with the airfare. The only difference is the extra bureacracy related to COVID, which increased how long it took each person to get through immigration, resulting in long lines after the plane. It didn’t help that we arrived so early in the morning that the food places weren’t even open yet and we had to wait in line while hungry. Eventually, we picked up the rental car and drove into Reykjavik for breakfast. We took the day easy by just exploring Reykjavik on foot, and took a nap in the afternoon when the jet lag caught up to us.

That night, we had probably the most memorable meal we’ve ever had at Tapas Barinn. The great thing about tapas is that as tourists, we get to try a little bit of everything as opposed to ordering entrées.

I even got to try some Flóki single malt whiskey. The smokiness from the whiskey actually comes from the barley smoked using sheep dung, a traditional cooking method. I also got to try some more brennivin like my last trip to Iceland – it’s essentially a grain alcohol (40%) and flavoured with caraway seeds, which gives it a sweeter flavour than something like vodka.

I had visited Iceland a couple years ago, but it was in the winter where there was only 4 hours of light per day, and even then the sky looked like dusk.

This time, travelling there in the summer, I didn’t see the night sky the entire time I was there. I could more clearly see and appreciate the nature around me, like the endless fields of moss growing on the rocks, and sheep freely roaming the fields.

It is thought that the Icelandic sheep were introduced to Iceland by the Viking settlers. Farmers allow them to freely roam around in the summer months, and as winter comes, they round them all back up again.

Like my previous trip to Iceland, we travelled along the Ring Road to see the waterfalls, and the volcanic beaches.

This is what the view at Seljalandsfoss looks like in the summer versus the view I saw in the winter. I had no idea Iceland could be so green. In the summer, people can even walk behind the waterfall, between the rock and the falls itself, but in the winter, the trail is closed because of ice.

Skógafoss looks about the same between summer and winter, except the vegetation is greener in summer.

A kitty even came out to hang out with us! As we were walking, the cat just walked up to us and stopped, expecting pets as a payment to pass through. After that, off it went.

Unlike travelling to Iceland in the winter, there were no restrictions (4WD) to drive up to Dyrhólaey in the summer. As we drove up, I could see why. The road was a set of steep switchbacks on gravel roads that were only a little more than two cars width – and there were no guardrails.

From the top, one can see the endless mountains, or watch the waves crash against the beaches of volanic sand.

The next day, we took a Superjeep tour to see ice caves on an active volcano known as Katla. The reason why it’s called Superjeep is because it can deflate its tires (for icy roads), and inflate them back up again depending on the terrain, but otherwise it looks like your typical Ford Excursion but with big tires.

The ice caves were located a ways in from the glacier. In summer, a lot of the ice had melted, revealing the volanic sand and rock underneath.

Only just now as I was writing this, did I realize we were travelling on a literal volcano, but I suppose it’s safe.

As we headed up the volcano, the lush, green vegetation quickly disappeared, revealing a rocky landscape with a mix of ice and black volcanic rock. Grey clouds covered the sky and it began to rain.

Eventually, the tour guide parked the truck, and we began our volcano hike. He brought his ice pick with him and used it several times to cut steps in the ice.

Despite the summer season, the temperature still felt like a mild winter. But it still meant the ice caves would not be as fully developed as in the winter season, and this could clearly be seen when comparing the ice caves from this trip versus the previous one. In fact, the winter ice cave was really more of a tunnel, while the picture of the summer ice cave was taken from the end of the cave with the camera pointing out.

The ice on top of the volcanic rock looked so alien that several movies used this place as a location for another planet. Rogue One was filmed in the area for the opening scene where young Jyn Erso hides from the stormtroopers. The movie doesn’t show the whole cave, but the similiarity is clear. If the movie had shown the whole cave, one would see why people call it the “Yoda Cave”.

It was nice staying in the cave for a bit as a brief respite from the rain. We made the mistake of wearing jeans for a multi-hour hike in the rain, and our wet clothes just made us even colder. We also got the chance to chat a bit with others on the tour. We met an orthodonist who practised in Greece by the name of Thanos (I wonder if he was aware of the MCU), and another who claimed to be a “voodoo priestess”, whatever that means.

The next morning, the plan was whale and puffin watching. It turned out to be an incredibly bad idea because I apparently get seasick, and didn’t get to see a lot. Even those who did see whales could really only see a small fin barely capturable on camera. Only a small percentage of people get to see the whale flying out of the water and crashing back down. Good thing the puffin watching was on a separate tour so I got to recover from the seasickness, but we decided not to go and instead gave the tickets away to another group that we overheard looking for tickets to the same tour.

Instead, we went to go get some Icelandic hotdogs for lunch. The key things that set it apart are the condiments, and the sausage. In addition to ketchup, and sweet mustard, they also add “remoulade”, similar to mayo with added herbs. The sausage uses lamb, as opposed to chicken/pork/beef.

Next, we headed to the Reykjanes Peninsula and the Blue Lagoon. We reached the tip of the peninsula and stood on the cliff watching the waves crash against the shore. If there was such a thing as the end of the earth, this was it. Despite strong gusts of wind, thousands of birds nested on the side of the cliff. From far away they look like white specks, but one can see them clearly with a good set of binoculars.

Next, we went for a relaxing soak at the Blue Lagoon, a man-made spa fed by water used by a nearby geothermal plant.

The water forms a milky blue colour from the high silica mud, and is supposedly good for the skin. They even sell super overpriced skincare products at the gift shop.

The area is beautiful with all the steam slowly rising from the hot springs with the light cool breeze. It would have felt like a whipping biting wind if not for the hot spring. You just submerge yourself until you feel not too hot and not too cold, and then relax with their cleansing silica face masks and a drink.

After leaving Blue Lagoon, we’d learned there was an active eruption happening at the nearby Fagradalsfjall volcano, and was happening slow enough such that it was OK to go see it.

A short walk from the parking lot led us to the lava flow. The trail continued upstream of the lava flow to the mouth of the volcano.

There were warnings for people to not walk too close to the lava flow because of risks of toxic fumes, but many did it anyway (as did we). Many curious hikers threw rocks on it just to find out that the lava flow had already hardened, even though there were still visible fumes coming out.

The hike turned out to be really long, and we weren’t really prepared to do a multi-hour hike at 20:00 in the cold, wind, and rain. As we reluctantly turned around, we saw people pointing the other and when we looked, we managed to catch a glimpse of the volcano spewing lava from afar. It makes sense now why people call it the “land of ice and fire”

It was surprising to see how watery the lava looked. I expected molten rock to be more viscous. The lava just spewed out in a splash. I felt super lucky to have seen such a sight.

As we walked back, I noticed these hexagonal patterns in the ground. Maybe this is how basalt columns form? From what I’ve read, under certain conditions, the cooling magma can cool in a way that forms these hexagonal shapes.

By the time we reached the parking lot, we were wet and cold (seemed to be a recurring theme by this point). Luckily there was a food truck at the parking lot selling hot soup.

The next morning before heading out to the Golden Circle, we started the day off with a nice brunch at Sandholt.

The unexpected star of the breakfast was the bread. As an amateur baker myself, this is the bread I aspire to make – it’s soft, light and airy with a crisp crust.

Next step along the Golden Circle was Geysir. The geothermal heat creates pressure underground causing the water to explode upward every few minutes. The entire area is filled with geothermal pools, some of which are so hot they’re bubbling from the heat and pressure.

It’s cool just to just stand in anticipation of the eruption. From looking at it, there’s no indication that it’s going to explode at all, and then it just does. At one point, the wind carried the water toward us and got us all wet, but luckily by the time the water hits the ground, it’s cooled down.

From the Geysir, we drove to Gullfoss. Unlike other waterfalls, this one has a unique feature where the water does a zig zag before hitting the bottom.

There were attempts in the past to build a hydroelectric plant here, but those efforts have not succeeded, and since then, the waterfall is now under government protection.

The last destination of the Golden Circle was Kerið crater. It’s believed that the crater formed through volcanic activity. Once the magma chamber emptied, it collapsed, forming the crater. The accumulation of water is not formed by rainfall, but is actually ground water.

On our last day before we left, we got the chance to try more Icelandic dishes. This time we had some lamb soup, dried fish, fermented shark, and some Einstök white ale, a local craft brew.

It’s not often that I would rave about soup, but I liked it so much I’ve been trying to recreate the flavour at home. It’s savoury soup with vegetables, lamb, and herbs/spices. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the dried fish and fermented shark though. The dried fish is served with butter and its flavour reminds me of super tough beef jerky with a light fish flavour, while the fermented shark has a texture of a ham with a soury tang. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste. The beer was great though.

That’s pretty much it for Iceland. We got the chance to try all sorts of local delicacies, and see a piece of nature we wouldn’t normally see in our part of the world. At the airport duty free, I even got to pick up some Brennivin, and a bottle of the Flóki sheep dung whiskey!

See more pictures of my trip to Iceland here

You will need:

• WSL2 setup with Firefox installed (mine uses Ubuntu 20.04)
• VcXsrv
• geckodriver

How it works

VcXsrv starts up an X server on the Windows host machine, and what WSL will do is connect to this server to pass on the details of what programs need to be displayed (in this case, the browser window). Geckodriver is there purely as a middle layer for Selenium to be able to interact with Firefox.

VcXsrv setup

This setups the X server so that Windows can display graphical data coming from the Ubuntu instance.

1. Download and install
2. Start it up with the the command line parameter “-ac”. This flag removes access control restrictions for connecting clients (which is okay as long as this server isn’t exposed on the open Internet and that the only client connecting is the Ubuntu instance)
3. Allow connections to VcXsrv on Windows Firewall

The “-ac” flag and allowing the program through Windows Firewall is pretty important. When I didn’t do this, Ubuntu would give me cryptic error messages like “Broadway display type not supported”, but once I set up these access controls, everything was fine.

Bash setup

Install firefox

sudo apt install firefox

Export DISPLAY variable in .bashrc (or for whatever terminal you use, maybe .zshrc, etc.)

export DISPLAY=$(ip route | awk '{print $3; exit}'):0

This will configure your DISPLAY variable to use the IP address listed in the resolv.conf file. The IP address listed there is the IP address of the X server that will be used for displaying the browser window.

Start up VcXsrv as described in the above and then try to open Firefox. The Firefox window should open.

Geckodriver setup

This acts purely as the API interface that allows Selenium to interact with Firefox. Selenium looks for this executable when controlling the web browser.

1. Download geckodriver (make sure to get the Linux one and not the Windows one)
2. Put it in /usr/bin (or alternatively some other folder in your PATH)

Selenium sample on Python

I tend to use Python when running Selenium code, and I haven’t tried it on another language (I imagine the principles are similar). Here is a piece of sample code for starting up the browser and opening up a website, but really any Selenium code can be used.

import time

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import DesiredCapabilities

def execute_with_retry(method, max_attempts):
    e = None
    for i in range(0, max_attempts):
        try:
            return method()
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
            time.sleep(1)
    if e is not None:
        raise e

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
capabilities["marionette"] = True
firefox_bin = "/usr/bin/firefox"
browser = execute_with_retry(lambda: webdriver.Firefox(
    firefox_binary=firefox_bin, capabilities=capabilities), 10)

browser.get("https://www.google.com")

time.sleep(10)

browser.close()

The right stuff

There are three markers of endurance fitness: aerobic capacity, anaerobic threshold, and economy

• Aerobic capacity: AKA “VO2max”, is a measure of how much oxygen you are capable of using when riding at a maximal effort for a few minutes
• Anaerobic threshold: the percentage of your aerobic capacity that you are capable of sustaining for a long time, such as 40 to 70 minutes
• Economy: tied to all metrics of performance in that it has to do with how much energy you waste while riding (e.g. physical structure, pedaling style, position on the bike, and bike-handling skills)

Power duration curve and phenotype

This is a huge generalization, but it shows that performance can be predicted from metrics

• Climbers: can maintain high power outputs even over long durations. Best predictor of success is power to weight ratio
• Sprinters: even higher power outputs with short bursts but drops off quickly over long durations
• Time trialists: Best predictor of success is power at anaerobic threshold. Aerodynamic drag is the biggest obstacle since often courses are quite flat
• All-rounders: someone who is pretty good at at least two of the above and they are often contenders when course conditions don’t favour the specialists

Training beliefs

The athlete must have faith that he is going down the right path for training, and follow the path beginning to end

Some people respond quickly, while some slowly. Some people have muscles made for endurance while others made for power, and it’s the rider’s job to adjust his training based on what he’s know about himself.

Training is always a moving target – what worked last season may not produce the same results

Four steps to training with a purpose

There is no one-size fits all way of training

1. Clear goal – well-defined goal drives training outcome. Even workouts need to have a goal. The combination of the workout goals ultimately point to the season’s goal
2. Expert instruction – e.g coach, mentor, training partner, or even yourself (i.e. by reading this book)
3. Specific practice – Everything done should follow the goal and the expert instruction. Training alone is ideal as it allows control over all aspects of workout without accounting for someone else
4. Immediate feedback – Review data as the workout is happening or immediately after. Need to stay mentally engaged with how one feels during workout

Previous: Chapter 1 – Mental performance
Chapter list: Chapter summaries

For best results, training should be considered a full time job. One’s entire lifestyle must be directed towards this objective. This lifestyle will also require following the correct training program religiously over time.

All athletes are limited more by their minds more than their bodies

One needs to develop a winning attitude. One needs to combine physical fitness with mental fitness.

This chapter touches on a few mental opportunities for success:

• Motivation – Competitive cycling demands an inner drive to excel. Everything in your life must be focused on the goal
• Dreams, goals, and missions – high performance starts with a dream. This turns into a goal, and ultimately the mission. Are you willing to make any sacrifice, ride any number of miles, or do any workouts deemed beneficial to achieving the goal?
• Believe to achieve – there are bound to be setbacks. One needs to remain confident, patient and mentally tough to power through. Relive each day’s wins, big or small to boost self-confidence
• Mental toughness – when we’re at our limits, fatigue sets in, and the mind tries to make compromises. A fully committed rider gets through it
• Patience – success won’t come quickly. We can introduce incremental change, like: sleeping 30 minutes earlier each day, cutting out 10% of junk food from our diets, etc.
• Commitment and tenacity – there are moments where fatigue says to stop, but the fully commited and tenacious rider finds a way to keep going
• Consistency and routines – the mind and body like regular and standard schedules. Things like jobs, families, and other responsibilities may interfere
• Your high-performance team – surrounding each champion is a network of family, friends, teammates, coaches, etc.

This topic can get rather deep, so there is value in reading other books on the subject and speaking with other successful professionals from all walks of life.

By improving one’s mental approach to cycling, their training and racing will benefit greatly too.

Next: Chapter 2 – Physical performance
Chapter list: Chapter summaries

The book attempts to answer questions such as:

• How should I schedule my workouts?
• How is it best to train during the weeks of my most important races?
• How many miles do I need before starting speed work?
• Is it okay to ride on the same day that I lift?
• How long should my recovery rides be?
• What can I do to climb better?

Different experts would each have their different answers to these questions, because there is more than one way to solve each training problem. This book aims to present ideas and concepts such that why the answers are the way they are. I’ll attempt to summarize my learnings chapter by chapter. Each link will be updated as each summary becomes available.

• Part I – Mind and body
  • Chapter 1 – Mental performance
  • Chapter 2 – Physical performance
• Part II – Training fundamentals
  • Chapter 3 – Basic training concepts
  • Chapter 4 – Training intensity
• Part III – Purposeful training
  • Chapter 5 – Getting started
  • Chapter 6 – Preparing to race
• Part IV – Planning your season
  • Chapter 7 – Planning overview
  • Chapter 8 – Planning a week
  • Chapter 9 – Planning alternatives
• Part V – Stress and recovery
  • Chapter 10 – Training stress
  • Chapter 11 – Fatigue, recovery, and adaptation
• Part VI – The competitive edge
  • Chapter 12 – Muscular force training
  • Chapter 13 – Tapering to race
  • Chapter 14 – The training diary

We flew into Israel from Tel Aviv and boarded a train to Jerusalem. I totally expected the Middle East to be pretty warm in February, but nope, it was snowing tiny little flakes in Jerusalem. If it weren’t for the Europe trip before this, I would have actually not brought any winter clothes, so I definitely lucked out there.

The Way of the Cross

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is probably what Jerusalem is most well known for. The Way of the Cross (aka Via Dolorosa) in Jerusalem is what is believed to be the actual path that Jesus walked during his crucifixion – regardless of whether you’re religious or not, it’s still pretty cool to see. This was a key event in the establishment of Christianity. The crucifixion of Jesus is considered to be historically true even by non-religious scholars.

The Way of the Cross begins with Jesus’ encouter with Pontius Pilate, the man who orders Jesus’ crucifixion. The Church of the Flagellation is built on the spot where Jesus was flogged by Roman soldiers before he carries the cross.

It’s said he falls three times during his walk.

Along the way, Jesus encounters several people (although some of these encounters are disputed):

• Mary – his mother
• Simon of Cyrene – he helps Jesus carry the cross
• Veronica – she wipes the sweat off of Jesus’ face, and so Jesus’ image was then supernaturally imprinted on the piece of cloth, now known as the Veil of Veronica
• the pious women – Jesus stops and gives a sermon

Eventually he makes his way to the location where he is nailed to the cross. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is built on the spot where it is believed he was nailed to the cross, and his subsequent death.

This is supposedly the spot where Jesus dies on the cross (below)

He is then taken down from the cross and anointed on the stone slab below. Anointing is a ceremonial ritual where a person’s body is smeared in aromatic oil to introduce a divine influence on the body.

Finally he is laid to rest in his tomb.

Of course his body isn’t physically in there, because supposedly after his ressurection, he ascended to heaven.

The entire Way of the Cross and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was extremely crowded and people lined up everywhere to pray in all the spiritual locations, like Jesus’ tomb, the home of the Virgin Mary, the Stone of Anointing, etc. People even touched all the surfaces that Jesus was said to have touched and I could see them in deep prayer.

Western / Wailing Wall

In Judaism, the Western Wall is one of its holiest sites. The actual holiest site lines behind the wall, the Temple Mount, but due to restrictions, Jews are not allowed to pray there, and thus the wall became the place where Jews went to pray.

Some Jews go on a pilgrimage to the Western Wall, some spend hours praying there. If you look closely in the video below, there’s a fellow running in circles and singing while people around him are rubbing their beards against the wall.

The Temple Mount

The Temple Mount is a flat plaza built on top of four retaining walls (the Western Wall among them). Although Jews are not allowed to enter for prayer (e.g. praying, singing, or other religious displays), people are allowed to enter the area as tourists.

The Dome of the Rock is one of the Islamic structures built on the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, non Muslims are not allowed to enter. Inside the dome is the Foundation Stone, and has religious significance to both Jews and Muslims.

Yad Vashem

This is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The entire memorial consists of a museum dedicated to the history of Jewish persecution throughout Nazi Germany and the places it conquered.

The eternal flame honours the victims of the holocaust. In front of it is a stone crypt containing the ashes of the victims.

The Hall of Names pictured above contains the the names of millions of Holocaust victims. The shelves around the room contain the names, while the cone above display photographs of the victims. The people standing in the photo are all Israeli soldiers – Jerusalem had a huge police presence with a lot of them openly carrying assault rifles (I felt very safe). Even some men in public that I saw had buzz cuts – presumably they are/were in the military. A few days before we arrived, there was a terrorist attack where a driver rammed a car into Israeli soldiers.

This train car is an example of the cattle cars that Nazi Germany used to perpretrate the Holocaust.

The Garden Tomb

Some sects of Christianity don’t believe that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains the real tomb of Jesus Christ. They assert that the real tomb is actually elsewhere, which they dubbed the Garden Tomb

Outside Jerusalem’s old town

Because Israel has so many Jewish people, McDonald’s started a special chain that serves only Kosher food. Even though it’s kosher, it tastes the exact same as regular McDonald’s which is pretty amazing for what it is.

Oskar Schindler is famous for saving 1200 Jews during the holocaust. He is now buried in Jerusalem. Putting stones and pebbles on the grave is an ancient Jewish tradition to honour the deceased.

There are also a lot of stray cats everywhere! I didn’t see any dogs though, just lots and lots of stray cats everywhere. People must take care of them though because they all look pretty well groomed.

Photo album: here

Originally, we had planned on visiting Sedan too. This was where the Germans made their initial breakthrough into France that eventually led to the French surrender. We intended to go to the Museum of the Last Cartridge, the local museum there, thinking that it was about the World War II battle, but actually it was about the Battle of Bazeilles during the Franco Prussian War (which I had never heard of before). In the end, we didn’t have time for it anyway so it was okay that we didn’t go.

The Maginot Line

Not far from Sedan, was a preserved portion of the Maginot Line in northeastern France, known as the Ouvrage La Ferté. The Maginot Line was a series of defensive fortifications stretching along the French border from Luxembourg to Italy built after World War I to protect France from a future German invasion. The location at the Ouvrage La Ferté saw the heaviest fighting during the Battle of France in World War II. It eventually was overwhelmed by German forces and its entire garrison was killed.

It’s exterior still shows the damage from the battle and grass has grown over the craters that were once there. It is possible to tour the inside of the bunker, but it is only available to large group tours.

Driving through the area, it’s pretty common to still see bunkers on the side of the road.

The Ouvrage La Ferté is in a pretty remote location, which makes sense considering it’s a defensive fortification, and because of the rain the night before, we ended up driving on some flooded roads, and even narrow farm roads that even Google Maps didn’t have a name for.

Verdun

From Ouvrage La Ferté, we drove to Verdun. Verdun was the site of another major battle in World War I, and to remember the fallen soldiers, a memorial containing their skeletal remains was constructed.

Unbeknownst to us, the ossuary was actually closed when we arrived, so we never got to go inside. We could only peek through the windows and see was a blurry view of stacks of bones. In front of the monument lies a military cemetery.

Nearby the ossuary is the actual fort that played a role in the Battle of Verdun. The fort fell to the Germans without a fight since the French had abandoned the fort thinking that the fort would have been ineffective against the heavy artillery that the Germans were using. Eventually, the fort was recaptured.

The road leading up to the fort was interesting too because some of the old trenches were preserved. The zig zag of the trenches can still be seen. Its purpose was to ensure that shrapnel exploding inside the trench would be contained. A straight trench would have allowed a clear path for the shrapnel to fly through more of the trench.

From there we drove three and a half hours to Strasbourg, where we’d start our fourth day of our road trip. That’s all for now!

• Maginot Line
• Verdun

The Hague (Den Haag)

The first stop is The Hague in the Netherlands. It’s the home of the International Court of Justice (pictured above). This is the international court that resolves international disputes that the UN is involved in. It was involved in well known cases such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to judge the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to judge the perpetrators of crimes committed during the internal struggles in Yugoslavia that eventually led to its dissolution.

For lunch, we searched around for something to eat and we could try some herring since that’s a popular dish in the Netherlands. We found a street food stall near us not far from where we were and proceeded to go inside and order. One problem though… the entire menu was in Dutch and there was no English to be found anywhere. We stood there looking confused for a moment, before I piped up and simply asked the staff (knowing that the Netherlands has a very high degree of English literacy) what we should order. He simply replied, “herring sandwich!”. It’s raw herring preserved in a brine in a sandwich along with condiments such as raw onions and pickles. It’s got a nice fishy freshness to it (like sashimi), but a saltier and more sour flavour because of the brine. This is going to be one of those foods that I’ll crave once I leave and can’t get anywhere else.

Another cool place to visit in The Hague is the Madurodam – it’s a park built purely on minatures. Imagine famous landmarks in the Netherlands, like the canals of Amsterdam, old town city squares, and palaces, but in miniature form! As a fan of Lego, I can definitely appreciate looking at miniatures!

Rotterdam

Next, we drove to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and stopped by the Market Hall for more food (I’m always down to eat). This time, we had yet another Dutch speciality: the stroopwafel. It’s hard to say no to two thin crispy wafers with gooey caramel in between.

And because I really enjoy eating protein, I couldn’t resist trying some cured meat. I think this is more of a Spanish thing as opposed to Dutch thing though. I found the flavour way too salty for my tastes (and I use a lot of salt when cooking), but I’m not sure what it’s supposed to taste like.

The market hall also has a nice selection of spices – kind of apt considering their colonial past trading spice and other goods in the Dutch East Indies.

And of course cheese! It’s so nice to see all the wheels of cheese, in all these different colours and sizes.

Baarle-Hertog / Baarle-Nassau

After leaving Rotterdam, we headed towards Belgium – well kind of. The cool thing about Baarle-Hertog / Baarle-Nassau is that a border between Belgium and the Netherlands cuts right through the town in seemingly random spots. You could just be walking down the street along the main avenue of the town and randomly end up in the Netherlands, then in Belgium, and then back again.

On our way out of the town, we noticed lane lines that we hadn’t seen before in North America. At first, we didn’t know why the lines were painted like that, but upon closer analysis, the road is simply a road shared by both cars and bicycles and the red section shows where the bikes should be, and the grey area is the section where cars should be when passing a bicycle. By allocating a space for the car to pass, the cars don’t get too close to the cyclists, thus reducing the risk of an accident. How cool!

Antwerp

Soon, we were fully in Belgium in the city of Antwerp and took a stroll in the old town square. The buildings here look pretty Belgian because of the way the roof inclines – it’s as if there are little steps as opposed to a smooth incline (so-called stepped gables).

This concludes our successful first day of the trip! On day two, we will travel to Oosterscheldekering, Ypres, and Dunkirk.

Photos

• The Hague
• Rotterdam
• Baarle-Hertog
• Antwerp

Many I saw travelled on foot, but some took scooters too. People along the way set up camps for the pilgrims to stay the night and to feed them.

At night there are huge parties dedicated to Shiva, with giant trucks playing music on giant speakers with lights shining everywhere. The festival lasts for five days with the streets blocked and the parties happening for every single day.

We got to try some Indonesian Roti. Each dish was like a dollar!! We watched the staff at the restaurant tossing and spinning the dough and everything. They have plain roti, roti with sausage, cheese, onions, or even dessert roti!

Getting around is pretty easy with the many taxis around or even a motorbike rental. I’ve read that there have been altercations between taxi drivers and Grab drivers, but I didn’t experience that while I was there, except for some areas clearly marked as not Grab friendly. There aren’t a lot of gas stations around, but a lot of stores fill up petrol in vodka bottles and sell them.

This section of the beach was part of a restaurant/bar/resort called Ku De Ta, and people could just sit back and enjoy a drink or two (cigars are on the menu too!) while enjoying the beach. Locals own the chairs on the beach and charge people to sit on them.

We couldn’t chill on this beach, but we did have a pool in our villa! Mike made an amazing video tour of the villa in his video below!

I spent my time in the pool learning how to swim (at this point, I didn’t even know how to float). I started off being super uncomfortable even leaning back to float, and was really frustrated at not being able to do basic actions on the water. I looked up YouTube videos on how to float and tread water and eventually figured it out! We basically stayed in the pool until we got hungry for dinner – this time to try local seafood. Mike, if you’re reading this, you missed out by not recording this part.

After the meal, we went back in the pool. I practiced some more, and when I got tired, I floated on my back and gazed at the stars.

I was disappointed to leave this amazing villa, but alas, all good things must come to an end. The next day, we took the plane and flew back home, where we resumed our regular lives.

For my photos of Bali, click here.