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.