The second day was my birthday, so what did I do? I hired a bike, naturally ;) I'd read about a little place called Damme just a few kilometres outside of Bruges that involved a nice ride along the main canal out of town that I thought would be worth a look. However, while in the bike shop I noticed a map that showed the Netherlands border was just 20kms from Bruges out past Damme with a little dutch town just a bit further in! Fucking perfect - happy birthday to me! These canals are amazing. Apart from the occasional bend here and there they're very long and very straight, completely lined with trees the whole way. It was just water, trees, the cycle paths and me - nice!

More windmills - I knew I was getting closer to Holland :)

It didn't take long to get to Damme, which although only having a population of bugger all and covering an area of bugger all, is officially a city. Back in the day it was the main port for Bruges where large vessels offloaded their goods to smaller boats or barges for the rest of the trip up the canal that I'd just biked.

I don't know.

I don't know either.

I do however know this was a great little track that followed this river along for while before ending at a random back road.

Damme is a really picturesque little place. It's packed with restaurants and bars etc, although I was too keen to get to the border to stop and eat. The road out of town would be bloody spooky at night with these massive trees towering over it!

That BMW tour that was parked up outside City Hall in Bruges yesterday was in Damme today.

Not far out of Damme I came to a junction of cycle paths and roads. One path headed southeast 50kms to Ghent (another big Belgian city that we would've stayed in if we had the time), another headed 10kms northwest to the North Sea coast, and the path I was on continued 10kms to the Netherlands border. I would've given anything to have had the opportunity to bike all of these paths - more big green canals that seemed to go on forever. At some stage if I get a car, I'd like to do a big road-trip (or two or three) around Europe and this is one spot I will definitely be returning to with my bike in the boot!

After fighting a head-wind I made it to the border, and this was it - just a random barrier that didn't seem to serve a lot of purpose. A pretty modest entry for my first time in the Netherlands :)

Shortly thereafter this was my destination - the little Dutch town of Sluis.

More big tree-lined roads heading in...

More windmills...

And more bikes - love it!

Sluis is quite a bustling little shopping town and was really good just to meander through, especially after a 20km haul into a bloody head-wind on a bike that wasn't the best thing for it (at least the whole place is flat!).

Yup, I was definitely in the Netherlands!

I spent a good couple of hours here just soaking up the atmosphere of my third completely unplanned trip in as many holidays: I ended up in New York while in the US, Milan while in Italy with work, and now the Netherlands while in Belgium - quite a nice hat-trick I'd have to say! :)

Jen shouted me a birthday dinner at this very posh bar that was apparently a hospital back in the day. Lots of Hoegaarden for me :) I had fish for dinner, but I'm not sure what the frothy stuff was, or the green turd-like streaks hehe. Dessert was this bloody yummy mango stuff, with a meringue that looked like dog shit after being on the footpath for a week.