Nijmegen

My trip to the Netherlands this week was lovely!  I left early Monday morning: first stop Nijmegen, the oldest city in Holland. 

(Side note: the Netherlands is the official name of the country, but Holland is also acceptable and used colloquially even among the Dutch people.)

A beautiful cathedral near the old (and current) city center.

Not sure when the fire hydrant was installed at the base of this ancient cathedral...the building itself is older than the United States!!

If you know me very well, you know I can't pass up a cheese shop!
My fearless guide Hadrien poses with some giant, delicious cheese wheels.

I relived the great Nashville flood when we walked up and looked over the dike! Fortunately, the Dutch are well-prepared for flooding.  What you see above is simply a street next to the river which floods every few years. No homes are built at this level.  This year, the Swiss Alps got a lot of snow, which is beginning to melt.  Hadrien tells me he used a map to follow this river back to the Rhine. 

There were lots of people out and about, looking over the wall.
 Apparently this is the biggest flood in a few years.

This meter is used to gauge water level.
The normal level is +7 meters....so at this point it's almost double!

"In de Blauwe Hand" - the oldest pub in Nijmegen, established 1542.
A Dutch girl I met on the train from Brussels, named Sietske, recommended this as a great lunch spot.
The pub was named "Blue Hand" because it used to be right next door to a factory where blue jeans were dyed, using indigo. The workers would come to the pub for a drink after hours and they all had blue hands from the dye.
Unfortunately it was closed when we stopped by!

Three-story bike parking garage at the Nijmegen train station.
This is nothing...wait till you see the double-decker racks below!

To get your bike up and down from the top rack, simply pull the red handle and lower it to the ground. It becomes a ramp.  Very clever.

We spend a good few hours walking around Nijmegen before taking the train to Amsterdam.  Stay tuned for more on my trip to the Netherlands!