Matt & Jill's Zurich Adventures: Arnhem and Noordwijk, NL

Round two of Arnhem. We first discovered Arnhem last August and we were determined to get back to the area with our tent. Camping in the Netherlands is very convenient. By and large the land is flat and bike lanes connect everything, plus alot of the campgrounds were renting bikes. It's such a great way to get out to see the area and enjoy nature. We got an early start to De Hoge Veluwe National Park and we were rewarded! Here we picked up our free bikes with admission and rolled through kilometer after kilometer of open bike trail - all to ourselves. Of course the park is big enough that even later in the day when mostly all of the 1,500 free bicycles were in use, the paths were still not very crowded.

My only regret is that we did not visit the Kröller-Müller Museum. It was such a nice day when we started out into the park and the museum entrance would have doubled our fare, so we went without it. Only to remember later that this museum is the second largest collection of Van Gogh's work and houses one of my favorites “The Café Terrace at Night” plus some others. Well, looks like I'm just going to have to make another trip back to De Hoge Veluwe sometime.

After we left the park we went to Openlucht Museum or "Open Air Museum". This museum park relocated some 80 historic homes, mills, and farmhouses to create a little preserved town from the past. It's great for kids but was a little soft on value for us.

We left heading west to the sand dune and bulb region of Noordwijk aan Zee. This stretch of beautiful sandy beach is located on the North Sea between Den Haag and Haarlem. Noordwijk aan Zee actually has a large complex of hotels and a nice strip of restaurants, but we camped in a more residential section called Noordwijkerhout. Also a great place to go if you love horses, we saw many people riding along and into the sea. Again, bike routes everywhere along the dunes. Yet another place I'd like to return.