Here is another shot of our hotel for the week:
The Mare Fan Fryslan is a former small cargo ship, no sails, converted to a three masted schooner with rooms for about 40 people. Fortunately, our trip only had about half that many so we had lots of space. Most days we were on our bikes around 9:00 and then rode until we’d meet up with the ship around 2:00. After that we grabbed our showers and then rejoined the rest of the passengers to chat, help with the sails, and eventually have dinner. Liane had to do most of the talking as most of the other passengers on this trip were German speaking. I did learn the German word “schnell” which means go quickly. Some locals out walking their dogs felt Liane was cycling too slowly and took a moment to teach me the word. For some reason, she did not appreciate this.
We did spend one meal in French with a Belgian, where I can at least listen, and one in English with an Australian. Having three masts and 5 sails off them meant that helping with the sails was a big job. The sails were hand-cranked into position. We needed up to three people on the cranks in some cases.
Here is the obligatory windmill shot from one of our rides:
And here is the modern version which was a lot more popular:
There are a few thousand of these all over the land and out on the water. You can also tell from this picture that our riding wasn’t very challenging – the land is flat!
Like the other countries we visited in our time off, the local residents were often of the furry variety.
These two are sitting on the top of one of the dikes holding back the ocean.
Unfortunately, our plans for a Danube bike trip have fallen through (yet again). The boat was going through a refurb and it took longer than expected. After much discussion, we decided to return to Victoria and get back to our “real” life. After a long day of train, plane, bus and ferry, we have returned to Victoria, We are now looking at places to live and figuring out what we will be working on.