Spring Flower Bike and Barge Trip from Bruge to Amsterdam

I had an amazing trip on the Spring Flower Tour from Bruge to Amsterdam. Connie and I flew into Amsterdam and stayed a couple of nights to see the city which was amazing, then we met the rest of the girls at the airport to take our bus ride to Ghent. We were quite surprised by our tiny sleeping quarters, that didn't match our monster suit cases. We struggled with that for awhile, then decided Connie would just have to stand her MONSTER bag up so we could get to the bathroom! It was pretty comical. We had our first dinner on the barge, then took off on a walking tour of Ghent which has a beautiful town center. The next morning we took the train to Bruge and took a horse carriage ride through the town to admire the historic monuments. Bruge is called the "Venice" of the North and is often considered the most beautiful of all Flemish cities. We took a train from Bruge to Dendermonde to have dinner on the barge and get ready for our first bike ride. We left Dendermonde at 9:00 a.m. to ride the bikes to Antwerp which was 60K (37 miles)! When you haven't been on a bike in 20 or so years........the backside was a wee bit sore after arriving at the barge! If I remember correctly, it took us 6 LONG hours! We were very happy to see the barge, the shower and were ready for our 6 p.m. dinner. We left the barge at 8:00 p.m. to tour the City. Antwerp is known as the "Diamond City" and is Belgium's most busy seaport. Thank goodness Tim, the tour guide, decided to break the next day up as we were scheduled to ride another 60K! I had a hard time sitting at dinner. The next morning we sailed across to the province of Zeeland in Holland to reach Tholen. It took a half day, so a little more time to rest the backside, however, getting on the bike again was quite PAINFUL! We rode from Oude Vossemeer to the beautiful walled town of Willemstad. It is a beautiful walled city on the Holland Deep River. I talked to myself for the first few K's...., but luckily after the FIRST DAY the 25K ride was much easier as I became numb quickly! We ate dinner then took a short walk around Willemstad. The third day we rode 35K, but the first part was only 15K which was a beautiful 1 hour ride to Kinderdijk. We stayed there about 30 minutes and went inside the working windmill that is now a small museum. It's amazing to see the kitchen, beds, etc. inside. We then rode through more Dutch mills, farms and quaint villages on our 20K ride to "cheese town" Gouda. We had dinner on the barge, then took a walk around the square. From Gouda we sailed to Oude Wetering. We rode 14K from Oude Wetering to Keukenhof, the world's most spectacular flower garden with over 6 million bulbs, with the theme being the Olympics. The flowers were amazing, but guess what.........the battery was dead, and I decided not to take an extra one! The last day Connie and I decided to take the barge rather than bike the 35K back to Amsterdam as we needed to get their early enough to buy a few things. Everything closes early, so we missed alot of the shops during the days we were biking. The other girls with us rode the bikes as they were going to stay in Amsterdam a couple more days. I hope you enjoy some of my pictures. There were 6 of us and 20 more in the group.