And we're glad we did... Sneek is worth a visit!
We found a parking spot right in the central area beside a canal. There just happened to be a public shower and washroom facility that the boaters use, so we would take advantage of the showers as well.
Be warned... lots of photos today!
Odd... very little traffic in this area.
Of course we always hesitate to drive into the central area. But Max isn't much bigger than a small delivery van, so it's not that risky. But you never know when things might be narrow. Fortunately when we arrived in Sneek, it wasn't very busy. Also, the parking area we had read about was listed by other motorhomers, with the warning that it was only suitable for vans under 6 meters. Max is 5.9 meters, so we figured it would be fine.
And it was. In fact, we were the only vehicle in our row when we arrived.
View from where we were parked with Max.
We went for a wander around town to see what there was to see...
Fortuna's Fountain.
The whole statue is constantly spinning.
This is a popular photo spot.
We had to wait our turn for people to get out of the way.
On the other side of this is a popular boating canal for pleasure craft.
And it was probably the warmest day since we've been in Netherlands. I think it got up to 27C (81F), so by mid afternoon the canal was really busy with boaters out enjoying the day.
Central canal in Sneek.
More boats.
The distinctive Sneek water tower was built in 1908.
This old house has some interesting brickwork.
Sneek, Netherlands even has a Texas Steakhouse!
It's a really pretty town!
Scenery along the way.
The buildings have such character.
Don't forget, you can click on any photo to make it full screen and zoom in for detail.
The patios are starting to get busy with the Saturday lunch crowd.
I said earlier that things weren't that busy when we arrived at about 11:00am. Well it turns out we weren't in the right part of town. Everybody was on the pedestrian shopping street!
Everybody is out shopping!
Typical street.
The interior of this church was nicely painted.
Walking back to Max, there was this huge old boat going through the canal.
It just barely fit!
Beautiful boat.
We had some lunch and then used the public shower. We could have stayed right where we were for the night, but the town of Bolsward (pop 10,000) was only a few more kilometers and we wanted to see it too. They also have a free RV dump station, so we drove over there, made use of that, and found a large municipal parking lot where RV's are allowed to stay the night.
The town of Bolsward.
The tall building is the fancy city hall.
The canals aren't only used by boaters!
Bolsward is another place worth visiting.
The city hall is a magnificent building.
We spotted this lego model of the city hall in someone's window!
Bolsward dates back to the middle ages. So there is a lot of history here. There is a church that dates back to the 13th century, but there was a big fire in 1980 that left only the walls and facade. It was almost demolished, but instead they built a glass roof over it in 2006, and the interior is now used for other events.
Broerekerk, Bolsward.
These walls are about 800 years old.
They left the charred interior of these wooden doors.
Bat statue fountain.
We took a walking path that backed onto some small apartment buildings, and saw this...
They built a ramp for their cat!
We came across another old church with some interesting things to see...
The organ was beautiful!
Lots of ornate carved stones in the floor dating back to the 1500's.
Typical houses, with a canal in their backyard.
It's not often we are parked overnight in town, so we took the opportunity to go for an evening walk.
All the boats parked up for the night.
Remember a few days ago we were saying there aren't enough public facilities in Netherlands? While that's still true, we have come across a couple of these odd things...
This is called a urinoir.
There are four sides to it, and when a guy has to go, you just walk up to it and go. Your back is in plain view, but what you are doing in the front is well shielded. There are four identical sides to it. We saw one on a busy street in Ultrecht. Someone else was using it, and so I did too. It felt a little strange to go pee in such a public spot, but when you have to go, you have to go.
Not sure what women are supposed to do. It doesn't seem very fair!
Side street in Bolsward.
It began raining shortly after 11:00pm last night and we think it rained all night. Didn't stop until about 9:00am this morning. It's actually supposed to be a decent afternoon, but the week ahead doesn't look great with lots of rain in the forecast. Hopefully they are wrong!
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Rechargeable Quick Fill Air Pump. Great for air mattresses and beach toys.And in Canada...
All the towns look very clean. Is that really the case?
ReplyDeleteSo far in the Netherlands this has definitely been the case. We find very little garbage around although we do see graffiti in places.
DeleteI wish we still built public buildings the way they (and we) used to. Nowadays the taxpayers would never stand for that kind of extravagance.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, they seem to spend a TON of money even on new modern public buildings, the buildings just don't have the same character and detail that these old buildings have.
DeleteWho will be the first commenter to say, "Thanks for the Sneek peek?"
ReplyDeleteYou! :)
DeletePronounced as " snake".
DeleteLol, Lee maybe this is why it was only you that said that, perhaps the others new is was pronounced "Snake"! We have to admit though, we were pronouncing it wrong too. :-P
DeleteKevin and Ruth, you have outdone yourselves with these photos. They are so beautiful. And so old, wow. We are Dutch descendants and live in Holland MI so I see a lot of similar architecture in our town. And yes, Dutch clean is very true. Thank you for posting these. Its as close as I'm going to get.
ReplyDeleteWe are glad that you enjoyed this post so much and the pictures! I don't believe we have ever been to Holland, Michigan, it looks like we will have to stop by there some time if we are ever in that area, just so we can compare the two.
DeleteDutch clean, really is a thing! It is almost too clean and orderly, lol. :-)
Love looking at photos of cities and what it has to offer. Yes, it really isn't fair women don't have public facilities to go pee. They should install women only bathrooms.
ReplyDeleteI agree! Not fair at all, especially for a society I'd have thought was more equal than the US...guess not.
DeleteThey don't need to make a women's only bathroom, it just needs to be unisex and some of the few public washrooms that we have seen are unisex. The other alternative is for women to buy a stand-up urinal device!
DeleteMore wonderful photos of such beautiful spots! Of course the ducklings are my favorite, but I also love the cat ramp and the architecture.
ReplyDeleteThank you Emily! I think I enjoyed everything about the day. :-) I really had to laugh at the cat sleeping on it's cat ramp. I thought that the ramp was a great idea. The apartment had it's patio door open as well so that the cat could come and go but I wonder if they ever get any unexpected visitors in the apartment like squirrels, lol.
DeleteGreat memories for me:} I lived in the Netherlands for total of seven years. Spent lots of time on the water in the north country. A boater's dream:)
ReplyDeleteYes, it is definitely a boater's dream up in this area. We can't believe the amount of boats that are on the canals up here and the amount of boats that sit in the marinas too. I am glad that you enjoyed your time on the water here. We won't mind being out on one of those boats for a week or two but I don't think either of us would want to do it full time like we do in our motorhome.
DeleteSo Sneek is pronounced "snake", just an FYI. I was there once as a kid
ReplyDeleteThank you for setting us straight on the pronunciation of Sneek, we were definitely saying it wrong.
DeleteI hope our pictures brought back some of your childhood memories. :-)
Often when I ran into similar ornate floor panels in churches in Italy, prominent people were buried below. It looks like that is likely here too. This link has a list of gravestones within the church and what they say, though I don't see a direct match to your picture. https://martinikerkbolsward.nl/martinikerk/geschiedenis-van-de-martinikerk/grafzerken/
ReplyDeleteHere is a page just about the organ, if anyone is interested in the history of it; and there are videos where you can hear the organ play. https://mypipeorganhobby.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html
WE have seen these floor panels/ledger stones in churches in England where they are very common. Thank you very much for the link to the stones. We really enjoyed seeing these ones because they have very detailed carving reliefs on them.
DeleteAlso thank you very much for the link to the organ and to hearing it being played. It always amazes us how beautiful these organ pipes look and how they sound when being played.
BTW, as you can see you comment didn't disappear into thin air, we now have comment moderation turned on so when you make a comment we have to approve it first before it shows up, as we were getting lots of spam comments.
We love that area, it is great for boating.
ReplyDeleteIt sure is and it definitely shows in our pictures with the number of pleasure boats tied up along the sides of all the canals. It is fun to see the different types of boats.
Delete