Not Even Leerdam
nathan - March 8, 2025, 4:26 p.m.
We decided to go to Leerdam for the weekend. The national glass museum is there, and it seems like a big center in the Netherlands for glassblowing.
So we hopped on a train Friday night with Jen's bike. I had checked earlier and found that Leerdam station has tons of OV-fietsen, so no problem getting a bike for me. Except that it turns out I was looking at Utrecht Centraal, which the app had helpfully sent me to as the nearest source for a rental bike. Leerdam is apparently too small to have its own OV-fiets setup.
Fortunately, we discovered this very minor oversight before getting to Dordrecht, where we had to change trains. So I hopped out and grabbed a bike from that station, and brought it on the train the rest of the way to Leerdam. We got in kinda late, though, so we just went to the hotel and ate something light before going to sleep.
Of course, the hotel was not in Leerdam. It was not even in the same province as Leerdam. It was 10 whole [ed. note: it was less than 10 minutes] minutes' bike ride away, over the river in Gelderland.
Jen gets flack for once again siting us in a hotel that's not near our destination, but honestly this hotel was much closer than the last one was to down town Breda, and the ride was much more pleasant.
Going past ponies is such a hardship.
So today we got up and went to the glass museum, which comes in two parts. First, the museum itself.
This had several bridges full of glass things.
Unfortunately, it's really hard to photograph glass. Particularly when it's inside a glass display case. For evidence, see below.
See? But the museum did have a garden out back with some pieces standing up in the sunshine.
After the museum, we went in to see the hot shop. On the way we passed an anchor with a cool flag-sign.
The flag says how this anchor used to belong to the luxury steam ship Leerdam, which sank in the North Sea in 1886. If you want the full text, here's an exerpt for your search engine of choice:
Daar, hoog boven het water, in de lucht wapperde fier de vlag van Leerdam. Voor het eerst gehesen in de haven van Rotterdam door de bekoorlijke dames die het fraaie handwerk hadden vervaardigd. De schenking van de vlag door de stad Leerdam werd vergezeld door een gedicht.
We also passed a windmill, because of course there are windmills.
The hot shop is just over the river from the town center.
There were some people making things in the hot shop, so we watched for a while.
After that, we wandered around the town. The church has a bunch of art outside it.
This street's name translates to "behind the church."
Anyway, we toodled around, back to the hotel, then to the train station. This is the map of today's rides, with a lot of extra data points because I forgot to turn it off while at the museum.
