North Netherlands Cruise Part 6 – Friesland – Our stay in Sneek

Shangri-La in Sneek

To go to the previous Part 5 click here or to go back to the biginning of the trip click here
I have finally got round to writing about this part of the trip.

My blog content tends to be very much about the truly boating aspects of our travels.

For a completely different take on our trips, you might like to have a look at my wife Karen’s travel blog.

Friese flags

We spent 4 days in Sneek. Sneek is the boating capital of Friesland, where there is the annual Sneek Wijk, which is a week of regattas and all sorts of boating activities.
We arrived about 2 weeks too late. Maybe a good thing as finding a berth might have been difficult.

Being the boating centre, there were a couple of good marine shops where I lightened my wallet considerably buying a few more things for Shangri-La.

Friese water lilies

One of which was a new 12 V light for the toilet/basin compartment. I thought this would be a pretty straight forward job.

Mmm. Took 5 trips to the shop to finally get it sorted out. First trip – bought a similar light fitting to the old one. Fitted it. Worked fine for a few minutes and then went out. The bulb I thought. Back to the shop where they gladly gave me a replacement bulb. Back on board – this one also didnt work.

Another South African flag!

Back to the shop. That fitting was the last one they had. So I opted for a LED strip light. Back on board – wired it up – and it didn’t work either – turned out to be a sensor light!

Back at shop,changed it for a normal strip LED light. It worked brilliantly! Now to actually fit it – ended up using double sided tape as the clips provided were so finnicky as to be useless.

All good in the end, but what a performance for what started out as a quick and simple job.

Beautiful old building in Sneek

In addition to the Dutch flag, all the provinces have their own flag. These flags are flown from building as well as boats.

The emblems on the Friesian flag represent the water lilies that are apparently unique to that part of the Netherlands. See pics 2 and 3.

One day we were pleasantly surprised to see another South African flag on a boat. It was a hire boat with a South African couple on board.

One of the many statues around the town

It was a glass-fibre Bounty Boat, hired from Le Boat, very similar to my cousin’s one on which we did our Canal de Nivernaise trip in 2008. To read about that trip see here.

We spent a few leisurely days here, wandering around the town. There are some beautiful old buildings.

They keep the canals neat and tidy, and many of the foot bridges are decorated with flowers.

The Dutch towns also have many little statues dotted around, depicting aspects of their history.

Footbridge over the canals

We also visited the Model Railway Museum – a fascinating model history of the Dutch railway system over the years, with many working layouts.

We came across an Irish Pub, where we enjoyed one or two Westmalle Triples.

These, along with Duvel and Leff are my favourite beers here, although they are in fact Belgian and not Dutch.

Karen and I enjoying a Belgian beer

One of the many good things about Shangri-La is her fresh water capacity.

She has 2 tanks which hold 750 litres.

We can easily last a week without topping up.

Topping up the fresh water in Sneek

However, the fresh water tank gauge decide not to work properly, and was showing FULL all the time.

Not very helpful.

So we probably topped up more often than was necessary.

Next time – Sneek to Lemmer.

To go there, to Part 7 click here