Day 5: Trip To Woudsend

Day 5:  Trip To Woudsend

We taxied to Amsterdam CS this morning for the train to Sneek, the closest train station to Woudsend where we get our boat.  The train was great.  We certainly can learn something about mass transport from the Europeans.  We had a taxi reserved  for 1:40 to pick us up in Sneek and get us to the  boat in Woudsend but we were nervous about the timing of the trains so we took an earlier train and  got to Sneek at 12:40, an hour early.


To kill time, we walked to a small hotel across from the station and ate lunch.  Lunch was great and our waiter was a young guy who spent a year as an intern at Disneyworld in Orlando and was thrilled to use his English.  He also was a great salesman-  we bought two bottles of Holland’s Genoegen, a local Frisian liqueur. 

            The cab (actually a small bus) was there right on time just as we finished lunch and the trip to the marina was only about 20 minutes.

We got our boat very quickly, and we had our briefing in about 30 minutes.  We then had a check out on the water with Mark, our briefer.  We learned how to stop (very important and harder than you might think), turn around (even harder) and dock on both starboard and port and into and out of the wind (hardest).  We then decided to take the boat on a test run by ourselves to pick up groceries from town. Trying to dock the boat for the 1^st time was an utter disaster.  The wind was blowing hard and I didn’t have a clue.  There was a old Dutch boater at the dock  who was trying to help, but he kept yelling in Dutch and using unintelligible hand gestures to try to help me which made me more confused. After crashing into the dock and 2 aborted attempts, we finally tied up.  This is going to be a long 5 days!

            The local grocery store was right at the quay, and we spent the next 40 minutes or so stocking up on essentials, water, wine, chips and salsa, etc.   Groceries were surprisingly inexpensive, nice change of pace.  Wine prices were from 3 to 5 euros.  We were afraid we were getting rotgut, but found them surprisingly good.  We left the women in town and we took the boat back to the marina for the evening.  Docking at the marina was much better, no Dutchmen yelling at me probably helped.  We took bikes back into town to meet Jeri, Toby, and Mollie for dinner.  As we approached town, we crossed a drawbridge and found the ladies immediately.  They had discovered 2 windmills and were excited to show them to us.  One of the windmills was used for grinding flour, and the miller was there loading flour and futzing with the windmill.   It made for a good photo op.  We found an eclectic restaurant that served Mexican, Italian, and tappas. After dinner, some walked, some rode, back to the boat for our 1^st night aboard.