Leiden and Back to Kagiland

Leiden is another university town with about 20,000 attending The Netherlands oldest university and also the birthplace of Rembrandt. The end of July all the students are gone and Rembrandt didn't achieve real fame until he moved to Amsterdam but we liked Leiden anyway.
The Passanten is very pleasant and busy; lots of coming and going. The first two nights, because we are a "bigger" boat we were essentially tied up to the sidewalk along a fairly busy street but then a larger boat came in and we gladly moved over to accommodate them. That's us still beside the sidewalk.



We did a little restocking of the grocery bin and spent a couple of days wandering about the city. It's very compact and, with the student population gone on holiday, pretty quiet. Many restaurants and shops close for a couple of weeks to give everybody time off and now is about that time.
We used the opportunity to get started on a couple of maintenance chores (between rain showers) but everybody said the weather was going to improve, with warmer temperatures and more importantly, less rain! (Special note: don't let the pictures fool you. We only take the camera out when it's not raining. Even the Dutch have been complaining about the wet summer and, now that everybody is on holiday, the complaint have really begun.) So Tuesday we headed back out the two lift bridges and turned left, headed for Kagiland.

We visited this area by car earlier on our visit, walking around Kag Island in a downpour. The Kaggerplassen (Kag Lake) is a very popular boating area with lots of small power and sail boats. We ended up tying up on an island in the lake separated from Kag Island itself by a small channel. Odysseus came with a small inflatable canoe that was missing a few important pieces but we managed to use it as a raft and trek into town to get some maintenance supplies. More projects! Cathy Jo got the cabin house top painted and I got more varnish on the name boards. Most importantly, no rain for three days! Huzzah!



Another boat on the island.

The second day here we were working away when a boat tied up behind up. The woman came up asking if we were speaking "American english" and it turned out to be a couple from San Diego, Glenn and Barbara Goltz, the first Americans we've met in the boating community. They have been at the canal boating thing for awhile; this was their 11th summer. They have a 12 meter boat that was originally designed by the Conniseur Cruise Lines as a "hire boat" but they have made it their own. It was great to swap stories with english speakers as the entire Dutch boating community speaks Dutch (!) and communication can be difficult.

The island is also home to a thriving blackberry patch and though we didn't have the lavender for Cathy Jo's special blackberry/lavender topping we did have the ice cream, to the envy of surrounding boats.

The cupboard is once more getting bare and Mr. Mercedes needs some exercize so it's on to Haarlem.