Monday, April 14, 2025

We wanted to leave by 10:30 at the latest, but it turns out to be 11:00. The journey starts quietly, but from Zwolle on the A28, it becomes busier. Later, past Meppel on the A32, it is quiet again.
From Leeuwarden, we drive along quiet provincial roads, only to discover that the road our GPS tells us to take is closed today. The GPS keeps trying to direct us to that closed road, but after a while, we finally get back on track, it took us about half an hour.
We arrive just in time for the ferry to Ameland and are still able to board, we just have time to park the car, get the bikes off the rack, and load and tie the luggage onto the bikes, though this is a bit stressful. It's crowded on the ferry, with lots of schoolchildren.
On Ameland, we can quickly disembark the ferry and quickly find the hotel, the Van Heeckeren Hotel; it's less than a five-minute walk from the center of Nes. It's a clean, modern hotel where we get a nice, spacious room on the ground floor. We unpack our luggage a bit and put our bikes in the bike shed.
We walk to the town center and look around; it's busy, with lots of people walking around. While walking, we decide to have dinner at Hotel Restaurant de Jong tonight, and we make a reservation.
That makes us thirsty, so we sit down at Van Heeckeren Grandcafé, where we order two beers, two glasses of wine, and six bitterballen (Dutch croquettes). It is a neat café with attentive and friendly service, but quite pricey, 40 euros.
It's quite windy, and despite the patio heater, it's getting quite chilly, and the street is also getting very quiet.
So we go to Hotel Restaurant de Jong, where we order fried sea bass and a lamb trio. The food is delicious, especially the way the rack of lamb is prepared is surprising but very tasty. Tom drinks a very tasty beer with it, Barnstiën from the Amelander Bierbrouwerij.
We return to the hotel on time, a little tired from the journey.

Written on: 2025-04-19

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