Why do we see so many people come back to our trips? There’s something about our cycling and boating vacations that keeps calling them back. Janneke Wallin – a Dutch woman who has lived in Sweden since 2010 – is one of these return visitors. Along with her Swedish husband she has taken two trips with Boat Bike Tours: the Northern Tour of Holland route and the Discover Friesland route. “I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t go on a trip with Boat Bike Tours!”
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Getting to travel without baggage
“This kind of trip was exactly what we were looking for. I knew what I wanted and googled it, which took me to Boat Bike Tours. We wanted very much to take a bicycling trip, but the baggage was a problem. So we looked for a bicycling tour in the Netherlands where we wouldn’t have to carry the baggage ourselves. That makes a boating and biking tour perfect. The advantage of a boat like this is that you have your own cabin, which you can arrange the way you want. You stay there the whole week, which I really like.”
More aware of your surroundings
“It’s really fun to see the Netherlands through my husband’s eyes. He’s Swedish. So for example you see a stairway that goes up to a canal and my husband asks ‘How is that possible?’ I don’t see the problem, but a stairway like that is, apparently, not a common thing. I feel like a tourist, since I don’t bicycle every day in the Netherlands anymore.”
You see so many sights during the trip
“The Discover Friesland trip is super pretty with cute little villages: really so nice. We went to the Eise Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker. It was very interesting. It’s super unique that someone more than 200 years ago thought of such a planetarium and developed it so that it still works to this day. It’s wild! You’d have to be as smart as Einstein, even if Einstein is better known. The Jopie Huisman Museum in Workum was really good too. I’m not at all a person who loves to look at paintings, but I have to say he had a special style of painting. Even I thought ‘Wow, what beautiful paintings!’”
Boats, little ferries and narrow bike paths in Friesland
“I love boats; water and boats are really wonderful. It’s unbelievable how many boats pass by. Little ferry boats are fun to take. Once we cycled on a bike path no more than half a meter wide through the fields. The Netherlands is famous for its fantastic bicycling infrastructure. Here in Stockholm they’re quite busy working on bike paths. And then you arrive at a half-meter-wide path and I had to laugh. Of course, a bike path like that isn’t meant for bicycling to work every day; it was in the middle of a nature area and that was really fun.”
Swimming every day
“When we came back from biking to the boat each day, I enjoyed jumping into the water from the boat. It was quite warm that week. Every day I swam. So much fun, being able to swim every day. Though the best swimming was in the sea on the island of Terschelling.”
Good company on board the Lena Maria
“It was really friendly on board the Lena Maria, despite that my German isn’t very good. As a teacher of Swedish, I’m very interested in languages, so it’s funny to try to speak a bit of German. There were also two people from Luxembourg who I tried to speak French with, but I didn’t really succeed. And the captain spoke Frisian. On board the Lena Maria there were only 24 guests so we had a lot of interaction with the other people on the boat and we often changed places at dinner. It was fun.”
You can choose between a long and a short route
“I do lots of word-of-mouth advertising for you here in Sweden. If you like biking in Sweden, that often means 300 km per day. But a partner who hasn’t trained up for that won’t like it. So I say: book a vacation with Boat Bike Tours. You’re given a route of 40-50 km (25-30 miles) and you can extend it no problem. You just bike further. The signposted bicycle junction system is fantastic; you can make adjustments to the routes easily. These are super-fun vacations: keep offering them!”
Get inspired!
Janneke really enjoyed the personal and family atmosphere on the Lena Maria. Would you also like to experience such a special vacation? Then discover our boutique ships – with small travel groups, special itineraries and even more personal service on board. Request our free e-book about boutique ships and be inspired by the possibilities!
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