This page shows, in chronological order, all the posts related to our July 2026 trip to the Netherlands and Germany. The trip was mainly a week long sailing and biking adventure along the Waddenzee, which is “the world’s largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats” adjacent to the Netherlands. The trip also included a visit with German friends in Kiel before the sailing, and a couple of days in Amsterdam afterwards. You will see just the preview of each post; click on the “Continue reading” links to read the entire post.
Planes, Trains, and Automobile
We are off to the Waddenzee! We are super excited to be embarking on one of our most exciting travel adventures — a sailing and biking trip in and around the Waddenzee. This was organized by a good friend who invited us and others, and our group now occupy 12 of the 14 cabins on […]
Train and Automobile
On Wednesday morning, we woke after a lovely restful night’s sleep, got a quick breakfast at a bakery across the street, then checked out of the hotel, and walked with our luggage over to the train station, where we got on the train to Kiel, in the north of Germany. When we arrived, the train […]
Mostly Train
After a lovely, relaxed home breakfast with our hosts, Frank drove us to the train station in Kiel. But from there, it was all trains, all day. We boarded our first train in Kiel just after 10, which was supposed to take us to Hamburg. We were at the station early, and there was a […]
Das Boot
Today, we woke up in Enkhuizen, and after a hotel breakfast, we walked around the town some, exploring the cute harbor town and marveling at the Dutch combination of streets and canals, where bikes get the right of way in general, and the drivers seem actually aware of what’s going on around them. We watched […]
Our First Cycling Day!
Today we started on the real work of this vacation — cycling! We had a small breakfast on the boat, and were able to pack a sandwich for lunch. We had our bike orientation, and Susan was given an e-Bike, and I got a “traditional” bike. We headed out from Enkhuizen and mostly followed along […]
Texel
We got ambitious today! We are docked at the island of Texel, and had our usual breakfast, then headed out on our bikes. We rode into a nearby town, Den Burg, where there is an open market on Monday mornings From the market, we rode on to a local chocolate shop, where they make fancy […]
Hoist the Mainsail!
This morning we set sail for Terschelling! The pre-breakfast coffee line was long today… After breakfast, the crew guided us through the process of raising and setting all the sails, and we are under wind power towards our next destination. While the boat is a flat bottom boat, and we have only 1.6m of draft, […]
Terschelling
Today we made a bike tour of the island of Terschelling. We left after breakfast, around 9:00, with Susan looking super cute in her biking gear, and made our way around most of the island. Our first stop was the Berry Barn There is an interesting history of how cranberries ended up on the island. […]
Harlingen
Today we headed out from Harlingen and biked to Franiker, which besides being a cute town, hosts the oldest working planetarium, built between 1774 and 1781 by Eise Eisinga as a hobby. He was university educated, but worked as a wool carder by day. Both the museum and the planetarium were amazing. From there, we […]
Makkum
Our day began in Makkum, and we rode past some farmland (par for the course), and under a railroad, to a windmill (also par for the course!) by the shore of a lake. A short while later, we came to a small river that we crossed by ferry! The ferry was operated “as needed” as […]
Haarlem
We left Enkhuizen today, and boarded a train for Haarlem. Everything went smoothly, and we were able to drop off our bags at our AirBnB shortly after we arrived, where we also met a very cute and friendly cat. We went into the Great Church of Saint Bavo, which was pretty amazing, especially considering it […]
Amsterdam
We started our second-to-last day having breakfast with the Candells, and then we headed to Amsterdam via the InterCity train, which takes about 15 minutes. From the central train station, we got on a local metro to take us close to the Heineken brewery. It was a somewhat drizzly day, and we had a scheduled […]
Amsterdam, Day 2
The big plan for today was to go visit the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. We took the train from Haarlem to Amsterdam, once again, and then took a tram from Amsterdam Centraal to Museumplein, where there are a number of museums, including the Van Gogh. We had tickets to enter at 10:15, but were […]
Jiggity Jig.
To market,To market,To buy a fat pig.Home again,Home again,Jiggity jig. We are home again, after a long travel day. We gained 6 time zones, making it a 30 hour day for us, so we pushed and stayed awake long enough to go to bed at a regular time, and we both had a great night’s […]
Fin.
This was a super memorable trip; the vacation of a lifetime. We are deeply indebted to Sarah, who first discovered the possibility, and to Susan D., who made it a reality. We are also grateful for all the friends, old and new, and those we made along the way, for making it a great experience. […]