Blogs from Friesland, Netherlands, Europe - page 2

Even though a road trip from Groningen to Leeuwarden would take about 45 minutes it is a much slower and longer trip via canal (and I am pretty confident in saying a more pleasant trip!) The canal that we had to take took us northwest to Zoutcamp, then we continued on to the Lauwersmeer (large lake with access to the sea) where we started turning southwest. This led us to an overnight stop in Dokkum. This portion of the canal again took us through plenty of farm land as well as through fishing areas which we have to always watch for no matter where we travel. We saw many more commercial fishing boats when on the Lauwersmeer with its direct access to the sea. As there is quite a distance between towns in this stretch of ... read more

So back to Sneek to where Isabela will spend her real summer without us, a little tiny marina attached to a boat building company called Brandsma – they build Vlets like ours but unlike Smelne have been building all through the recession. We knew that a fellow sister ship who had lived at Brandsma for about 6 years so we thought it was a good place to find out about and Isabela was warmly received so we hope it will be good. Our friends arrived, this time by car which poses its own challenges – where to leave a car and the necessity of retuning to pick it up. Luckily Brandsma were very happy to oblige. We had concluded that further escape was necessary from the crowds around the Sneekermeer so we had planned a little ... read more

doing a few family rounds.. (we still had a few people to visit, and it was my cousins birthday today!) DAY SIXTEEN: we woke up earlier than usual because we had a few people do visit in Friesland, dad wanted to visit his aunty whilst still in Holland and he'd planned today to do so. The plan was to be there at 11:00, so that we could have lunch there and hang around for a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of us slept in.. so we pushed it to about 11:30. Which i suppose could be a lot worse now that i think of it. We arrived there and to my surprise, were a lot more people than i expected. Also attending the lunch was 5 of dads cousins. We arrived there with and said hello to ... read more

Vlieland is one of the West Frisian Islands off the coast of northern Netherlands. This island is a combination of sand dunes, wooded areas and meadows. There is only one village on the island, Oost-Vlieland as the second village was lost to the sea in 1736. We had been told by many that this was a nice island to explore – it had plenty of hiking and biking trails and very little traffic as only the residence are allowed to have cars. All tourists that come by ferry must either walk or bicycle or take a taxi (very few of them). The ferry has an excellent system for taking everyone’s baggage into carriers (similar to what you see at airports) and then it is transported to the various hotels and campgrounds for the people. When ... read more

Well, it has been a month since i've written a blog entry and that is quite surprising. Days are going by so fast! I can't believe I have already been here for a month! Here is a recap of the past few weeks: My second week in Holland I spent at Dutch Orientation Course (DOC) in Boxtel where I met 20 other exchange students from USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Taiwan. During this week we had lessons on the Dutch language, and also had plenty of time to bond. We went to a dutch carnival (kermis), Den Bosch, museums, and even visited the Boxtel Rotary club. My roommate during the DOC week was Jillian and by the end, we were crying because we didn't want to leave eachother. Our host family (Marc, Els, Tom, and ... read more