Don’t look up?
So you probably think that nobody ever looked up at their living room ceiling and said, “I think I’ll build a scale model planetarium that will still be running in 2025”; then you are wrong! Ha! Else Eisinga said this very thing back in the 1700s, and then he up and built it. Crazy as it sounds, it still displays correctly today – it’s the oldest working planetarium in the world. And you can visit it for cheap.
Franeker is one of my favorite Dutch towns. Maybe it qualifies as a city, I’m not really sure how they qualify the distinction in NL. Aside from the planetarium, there’s a fantastic ice cream shop at the bakery – Korenbloem Schaffsma – in the city center – so of course we had to get a scoop while after the planetarium.
We spent a couple of nights at the marina – you can park on the city walls if you like, but we wanted to do some tidying up and needed to make sure we had access to a good sized rubbish bin. We also needed to do laundry and the closest one we found was a Wash-Me at the Karwei, which is actually very close to the marina if you are biking.
Laundry. Truly the most stressful thing about the entire trip for me this year was the laundry.
Dutch washing machines absolutely HATE me. Doesn’t matter what brand or what model or what sort of wifi app, put the coins in old school, or something in between, it’s just always a PIA to do the laundry because of the twelve million different types of interfaces and instructions and sometimes you gotta ride a few kilometers to find a washarette in the first place… we have friends who have portable washing machines on their cruising boats but that means you have to constantly keep an eye on the inline filter in the shower sump and you had better make sure your shower sump is actually powerful enough to offload all the water out of the machine or you’ll be filling your bilge up with used laundry wash water.
Bike rides. And bike roads.
When we got to Franeker, the e-bike advantage really came into focus. Unlike having a standard bike – or having no bike – the ability to hop on the bike and ride in any conditions – including super windy ones – is truly a game changer for cruising. We found ourselves halfway between Franeker and Dronrijp – kind of surprising since we were really just pedaling and sightseeing with no plan in mind. I’m not sure how many Americans can say they’ve been to Zweins (definitely a village by anyone’s standards) which is the midpoint between them on the bike road.
What’s a bike road? Netherlands has kilometers of paved “bike roads” that are numbered just like an auto route would be – you can ride the Frisian route 87, or the 364, etc – and there are maps and there is a Merrekrite for bikers. Such a fantastic part of the culture, it’s a shame that the US doesn’t have such a thing.
