Posts In The “Netherlands” Category

2020 Summary

2020 Summary

As with most of the planet, 2020 was for us a year of plan changes, adjusted expectations and unpredictability. In several ways our lives have changed notably, but much remains the same. Along with many fellow world cruisers, we experienced the unique challenges of being a visiting boater during a global pandemic. But overall we…

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Antwerp Arrival

Antwerp Arrival

On our final day of travel from Amsterdam to Antwerp, we passed through two locks and one bridge on a 30-mile, 7.5-hour run through the river Scheldt. Antwerp is the second largest commercial port in Europe after Rotterdam and commercial traffic was heavy in the river. Most of the Port of Antwerp is behind the…

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Dordrecht to Hansweert

Dordrecht to Hansweert

From Dordrecht we ran 41 miles over 7 hours to Hansweert, our final stop in the Netherlands. We passed through two locks and only one bridge, and returned to saltwater for first time in four months. Pleasure craft normally can’t moor in the commercial harbour at Hansweert, but we were allowed to overnight there because…

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Leiden to Dordrecht

Leiden to Dordrecht

We departed Leiden at 6:00am on a Monday morning, making a 38-mile, 8-hour run to Dordrecht and passing through 20 bridges and one lock. We got an early start because the first 5 bridges would open on-demand between 6:00 and 6:45, but were then closed for rush-hour until 9:30. The pre-dawn run was the prettiest…

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Leiden

Leiden

Historic Leiden is home to the oldest university in the Netherlands, established in 1575. The university achieved international prominence during the Dutch Golden Age, has produced sixteen Nobel Laureates, attracted lecturers such as Albert Einstein, and currently is ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. The city also has several excellent museums, including…

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Haarlem to Leiden

Haarlem to Leiden

The run from Haarlem to Leiden is only seventeen miles, but passes through sixteen bridges, nearly one per mile. The day started with a trip along the narrow and intimate canal through the center of Haarlem, almost close enough to touch the buildings on either side, and on past the Cruquius Pumphouse. We’d visited the…

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Return to Haarlem

Return to Haarlem

When we visited Haarlem last year by train, we didn’t even consider that we could bring Dirona here through the narrow inland canals with our 2.1m water draft and 9.1m mast. But a route does exist, and in mid-February we set off on a trip from Amsterdam to Antwerp via the Netherlands’ inland canal system….

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Amsterdam Friends and Visitors

Amsterdam Friends and Visitors

Once again, our winter in Amsterdam provided a great opportunity to meet new friends, catch up with old ones and meet in person some we’d only corresponded with. Several we saw at METS, the Marine Equipment Trade Show held annually in Amsterdam, and others we met in town or on Dirona. Click any image below…

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Final Week in Amsterdam

Final Week in Amsterdam

Between Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis, we spent a final week in Amsterdam before departing for destinations south. We completed a few boat projects with parts we brought back from Seattle, did some final provisioning, met some new friends and enjoyed a “second annual” Valentine’s Day dinner at Bistrot Neuf. Below are trip highlights from…

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January in Amsterdam

January in Amsterdam

After returning to Amsterdam from a Rhine River cruise in late December, we spent the first three weeks in January completing a number of boat projects and preparing for our upcoming trip south to the Mediterranean. Projects completed included installing a new 55-inch TV, replacing the windshield wiper arms, greasing the davit, replacing a depth-sounder,…

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Amsterdam Light Festival

Amsterdam Light Festival

We really enjoyed the Amsterdam Light Festival last year, and were looking forward to viewing it again. The theme for this year was disruption, where the artists “use light in a unique way to be disruptive and give us new impulses”. The route of the festival was quite different from last year, and only two…

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Amsterdam on the AmaMora

Amsterdam on the AmaMora

We arrived back into Amsterdam on the morning of the seventh day of our Rhine River cruise, where passengers would spend a day in the city and a final night on the AmaMora before departing the following morning. The AmaMora was moored right next to City Marina, only a half-block from Dirona, and we debated…

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2019 Summary

2019 Summary

For us, 2019 was the “Year of the Canal”. We spent much of the year cruising the Baltic Sea, and passed through an incredible 98 locks while transiting several major and minor canal systems, including the Kiel Canal across Germany, the Saimaa Canal through Russia to Finland’s Great Lake Saimaa system, and the Gota and…

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Return to US

Return to US

Following METS, we spent a relatively quiet week in Amsterdam, completing a few boat projects and hosting some visitors. In early December, we returned to the US for a couple of weeks where James spent a week at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas and a couple of days at the AWS data centers…

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METS 2019

METS 2019

METS (Marine Equipment Trade Show), held annually in Amsterdam over three days, is the world’s largest boats and marine equipment trade show. This year’s attendance reached 17,792, with 1,670 exhibitors from around the globe. Exhibitors range from superyacht builders and marine yards, to yacht designers, to engineering and composite products companies, to manufacturers of anything…

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Amsterdam First Two Weeks

Amsterdam First Two Weeks

During our first two weeks in Amsterdam, we enjoyed being back in familiar territory with the city already lit up for the winter. We revisited some of our favourite restaurants, found some new ones, and stocked up on supplies and parts from known vendors. We also completed a fair number of larger boat projects, including…

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Return to Amsterdam

Return to Amsterdam

We normally prefer not to return to the same location, particularly for a long-term stay. But in looking at stop-overs for this winter, where we would make a couple of return trips to the US, we couldn’t find anything that came even close to Amsterdam in terms of marina location, restaurant and entertainment choices, and…

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Flevoland

Flevoland

The 82-ft-long (25m) Veluwemeer Aqueduct, opened in 2002, is one of the shortest in the world. The water bridge carries boats with a draft of up to 9.8 ft (3m) and unlimited air draft over the road connecting mainland Netherlands with the province of Flevoland, the world’s largest man-made island. Other possibilities considered were an…

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