Saturday, April 18, 2009

This morning, we went to Texel Island.  Emily and I invited the others to come with us.  Sara decided that she would come along.  We took trains to Den Helder which took a little under two hours.  We then took a short bus ride to the harbor.  A ferry runs from Den Helder to Texel every hour.  The ferry was not what we expected.  Cars, charter buses, bikes, and pedestrians were allowed on.  There was a café with drinks, sandwiches, and desserts.  It was very spacious and nice.  The ferry crossing took about twenty minutes.

When we got off the ferry on Texel Island, there was a place where we could rent bicycles.  The three of us rented bikes for the day for 5.50 Euros each.  We really didn’t know where we wanted to go so we just followed the closest bike path.  We were biking into the wind which made it very difficult.  Along the path we saw pastures with sheep and cows.  Many had babies which was fun to see.  We also saw fields of tulips and hyacinths.  The wind was blowing in the right direction so the air smelled amazing. 

We biked along for a while and ended up going to Den Burg to check out the tourism office.  There really wasn’t that much information that we were interested in.  So, we decided to head to the beach.  We went to Den Hoorn since it was in the direction of the beaches.  When we arrived in that town, we took a path but realized that we were going north rather than west.  So we turned around and went back to town where we took another path.  We rode through some hills and eventually found the beach.  With the wind, the water was pretty rough.  But, there were still a few people sailing.  The sand was very fine and light in color.  There were also seashells everywhere.  It was a little chilly with the wind but still nice. 

After the beach, we headed back to Den Hoorn where we stopped at a small grocery store to get something to drink and a snack.  We then headed back to the port.  We just missed the 4:00 ferry so we had to wait for another hour.  We returned our bikes and then sat next to the sea.  We then took the ferry back to Den Helder where we took the trains back to Leiden.