Waddenzee TripLog

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Today, we woke up in Enkuisen, 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 […]

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 Enkuisen and mostly followed along […]

We got ambitious today! We are moored 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 […]

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, […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]