Charming Terschelling: 5 out of 5 Dutch islands visited

The third Dutch island of the five Frisian islands was a charming, sunny and pretty windy encounter end of this September... The island surprised us with fantastic seafood-restaurants, creative&cozy bars, big forest of pine trees (planted over 100 years ago), high sand dunes. By bike one can do best sightseeing as on all of the other 4 islands.

Nothing unusual for Holland were the long and huge white sand beaches. In the harbour of the West-Terschelling beautiful shimps-fishing-boats are on display, crabs are running around and tons of colourful buoys shine their strong colourd...My favorites however stay Vlieland and Schiermonnikoog, the two car-free islands (nr 2 and 5) :-)

The German Eastfrian islands from the sky/ Die Ostfriesischen Inseln vom Himmel gesehen

 
This is one lonely tiny island between the islands Juist and Borkum in the WaddenSea.

 

















While enjoying the carfree island Juist 2 weeks ago we have decided to visit all German Eastfrisian islands (Borkum, Juist, Norderney, Baltrum, Langeooge, Spiekeroog, Wangeroog). And we did this in one hour!  How do you wonder? By plane, we had a sightseeing flight over all these beautiful islands and enjoyed the fantastic green-blue-grey colours the Wadden Sea offers! I hope you have fun while checking my pictures:-)

 
The seals were having fun sunbathing themselves.

 
It was sunny and very busy on water: a lot of boats around the island Spiekeroog above.

On the picture above one sees the landing line on island Juist and the island Norderney behind it...

Ameland

Last weekend I had the chance to visit one more from the 5 Dutch "Waddeneilanden": Ameland. This is the fourth island (north of Amsterdam) and it is not carfree (as island 2 and 5: Vlieland and Schirmonnikoog). However biking on Ameland is still pleasant (be prepared for some tough wind though-its the Netherlands).

We went to the local "kaasborderij"(=cheese farm) and tasted the local organic cheese too. Next to this we said hi to the tons of sheep there, enjoyed the lovely old houses, climbed the lighthouse (next entry will be more detils on it) and breathed some fresh sea air:-)

Northern Dutch beauty: Schiermonnikoog

The sun was shining right into my eyes and it felt almost like summer.
Sitting in the outside bar of the Hotel "Graaf Bernstorff", I was enjoying watching the happening in the tiny center of the (only) village on the island. Busy crowd in front of the only supermarket here and the traffic jam of bikes...
It took us 3 hours drive and 1 ferry transfer (45 min) to reach the furthest northern island of all 5 Dutch Waddeneilanden: Schiermonnikoog...a national park, carfree piece of land (16x4km), and on the top sunshine + 18-20 degrees for the long Easter weekend...

Within 48 hours we biked between sand dunes and 2 lighthouses, met plenty of birds (there are wild pheasants running all over), visited a cheese farm, enjoyed the sun...In the ShellMuseum/Schelpenmuseum we had a great chat with Thijs, the owner of the museum, a local, who collects shells and snail houses more or less all his life. He has very impressive collection of shells from Western Australia too.

I also learned something new that day: the soo common for the Netherlands razor clam/Atlantic jacknife clam/lat. Ensis directus (on the last photo) was brought to (Northwestern) Europe via some big American ships in the 1978-1979. I still regard it with big respect as this specie does not exist at the Black sea coast, the coast I grew up with as a kid:)

Some more pictures from the island (translated from Frisian Schiermonnikoog means "Island of the Grey Monks") are to be found here.