Description

Price includes:

4 x overnight stay with breakfast (possible dinner, if additional booking)
Luggage transport
STO warranty
Reservation fee
Tourist tax
Very comprehensive travel documentation (maps and Friesland Travel Guide & Tourist Atlas (four-language travel book, 260 pages)
Free parking of your car at start and finish hotel
Free parking and charging of your bicycle at Eleven Cities Route hotels

Price does not include:

Travel and cancellation insurance (to be taken out with your own insurance company)
Lunch, dinner and drinks

For whom?
This cycling holiday is specially designed for people who want to get away from it all but want to experience a lot. Cycling fans who want a taste of the fascinating Eleven Cities culture, but don’t necessarily need to have all eleven cities to their name. It is a bestseller. As part of this package, you will visit the following seven, quite close to each other beautiful historical towns: Sneek – Sloten – Stavoren – Hindeloopen – Workum – Bolsward – IJlst. Together, they form the southern Elfsteden route. Besides these towns in south-west Friesland, you will also pass the forests of Sint-Nicolaasga and Gaasterland and get to know the IJsselmeer coast and the Frisian lakes. The southwest corner offers the most sights per kilometre and the greatest variety of nature, landscapes, cultural-historical events and water sports activities, which is why this region is the most chosen holiday destination in Friesland.

Starting day
Any day of the week

Start and finish
Hotel on the Eleven Cities Route

Free cancellation up to six weeks before arrival date
Weather conditions are no reason for cancellation at Friesland Holland Travel and cancellation is always covered by travel and cancellation insurance (to be arranged with your own insurance company)

STO Guarantee
This offer falls under the guarantee of STO Garant. You can find the conditions of this guarantee scheme by clicking here

The Eleven Cities Tour from day to day

After booking, you will receive personalised travel information for each day. In any case, on the first day you will be expected at your starting hotel (also the finish hotel) in the afternoon where, if you come by car, you will park your car during your cycling holiday. After checking in (between 15.00 and 19.00) and moving into your room(s), you will enjoy your first evening dinner in the restaurant. Well rested and informed, you will start your first day of cycling the next day based on your personal itinerary. Based on this, you can already choose the sights and scenic attractions to visit at home. You will find these in the thick travel guide and on the Eleven Cities route map, which you will receive after booking. On the last day, you will cycle back to the hotel where you started the tour, the start hotel, where your car is parked. Once your luggage has been delivered by the Friesland Holland driver (between 09:00 and 18:00), you can go home. This also means the end of the package, but if you don’t want to return home yet, you can book an extra night (in advance).

Luggage transport

The luggage service, roughly from the end of March to the beginning of October, is included in the cost of a cycling holiday. Between 09:00 and 18:00, Friesland Holland will transport your suitcases from hotel to hotel, provided with a Friesland Holland luggage label issued to you. This allows you to visit places to eat and drink and places of interest without worrying about valuable luggage on your bike. Please note that the luggage to be transported must be ready at the reception at 09:00 for transport to the next hotel. The delivery time may be extended due to exceptional circumstances, but these are rare. The driver will only take luggage with a Friesland Holland label. If you take the luggage yourself, for example because you are going home early and do not want to wait for the suitcases, or have to break off the journey due to circumstances, please report this to Friesland Holland. This avoids unnecessary delays due to the driver searching for your luggage and people at the tour operator’s office worrying about travellers. Also important: your suitcase(s) or bag(s) – one per person and please no heavier than 15 kg (think of the courier’s back!) – should be of robust stackable quality. No plastic bags and so on. Friesland Holland cannot be held liable for any damage to your luggage, such as a loosened wheel or handle, which very occasionally occurs with inferior suitcases. Friesland Holland is only responsible for the luggage from the moment it is collected from a hotel to the moment it is delivered to the reception of the next hotel. Breakdown assistance with mobility guarantee: The price of each Friesland Holland cycling package includes breakdown assistance with mobility guarantee. With this unique service, you are assured of replacement transport (luxury bicycle) in the province of Friesland, with the exception of the islands, if you have a breakdown or accident with your own bicycle or a rental bicycle en route and it cannot be repaired on-site or in the workshop of a local cycle shop within an hour. You will then be loaned a replacement electric bike with many gears and bags free of charge for the duration of your holiday and/or be taken to the day’s final destination by the Friesland Holland Assistance vehicle free of charge. The driver of the Friesland Holland Assistance van normally brings your own defective bike to the start hotel, but can, on special request and in consultation with the assistance driver, bring your own defective bike for repair to a bike repair shop near the lodge. Of course, the cost of repairing your own bike will be at your expense. In any case, you can always continue your journey with Friesland Holland Assistance. The service is provided from late March to early October, 7 days a week. Tip: Rent-a-Topbike’s luxury rental bikes are equipped with the best anti-puncture tyres. If you are going to ride the Eleven Cities Tour on your own bike, we recommend you also have anti-puncture tyres fitted, for example Marathon E-Plus with multiple puncture protection layers (level 7). The Friesland Holland bicycles are also equipped with these. The chance of a puncture is then minimal. Extra night If you no longer feel like going home at the end of the last day of your arrangement, Friesland Holland can book an extra night’s stay in the start and finish hotel – or another Eleven Cities Route hotel – for you. It is highly advisable to book this extra night when booking your arrangement, due to the high occupancy rate of our hotels.

Documentation set

Those who book this special trip will receive a 260-page A4 travel guide about Friesland and the Eleven Cities immediately after booking, complete with stories (in four languages: Dutch, German, English and French), lots of photos and maps and all sights along the way. So you can already enjoy all the beauty Friesland has to offer at home and choose the sights you would like to visit. The content of the information package you will receive at home after booking per room is:

Guest information. This is an important document that you should definitely have with you when travelling in Friesland. It is a personal itinerary with your lodging addresses, the routes to be covered and the distance to be cycled each day. The guest information also serves as a voucher/access to the hotels that have been notified by us of your arrival.
Friesland Travel Guide & Tourist Atlas (four-language travel book, 260 pages)
Route maps with bicycle junctions
Situation maps of the Eleven Cities Route to the hotels and back to the route
Elfsteden stamp card (per person). For a fee of 10 euro, after completing the Elfstedentocht of Friesland Holland, you will receive a named Elfsteden ear certificate
Holiday passport of Friesland
Luggage transport labels (must be on every piece of luggage!)
Booking conditions

About the history of the Elfstedentocht and contemporary tours

Once in your life, you must have ridden or sailed the 250 km Elfsteden route. Otherwise you will miss out on the experience of a good part of the rich history of the Netherlands. Nowhere will you find such a varied route as the Elfsteden route, world-renowned Frisian heritage, especially since the last Elfstedentocht on skates in January 1997. Arrangements The travel organisation of Fryslân’s tourism office, Friesland Holland Travel Service, offers on its websites a choice of 3- to 8-day Eleven Cities packages with SGR guarantee. These all include luggage transport and the fastest breakdown assistance: a replacement top bike immediately! Exclusive bikes You can do the Eleven Cities Tour on your own bike or on a luxury touring bike or e-bike from Rent a Topbike, Friesland Holland’s bike rental company. The tour operator has its own electric bikes and touring bikes, all top brands, all Elfsteden-proof and equipped with two nice and handy panniers as standard. So no typical rental bikes, but luxury two-wheelers with many gears and manually adjustable handlebars and seat post, such as e-bikes from the Alba Unique series. These are exclusive electric bicycles, co-developed by Friesland Holland and entirely based on Shimano technology. The drive technology is also from this top Japanese brand. Every stage, every day sensation Every stage by bike, car, motorbike, sloop, sailing boat or cabin motor yacht is a unique experience. For example, you climb terps – five-thousand-year-old residential mounds along UNESCO World Heritage Site Wadden Sea – ten metres high and cycle through the forests and over the cliffs of Gaasterland on the IJsselmeer. The pinnacle of enjoyment is sitting on the terraces in the centuries-old romantic towns or on the shores of one of the many Frisian lakes. And be sure to take a day out for Leeuwarden, the European Capital of Culture in 2018 for good reason! Theatre on the water There is theatre on the water every hour of every day throughout Friesland: modern yachts, sloops and large traditional sailing ships passing locks and bridges and mooring at the city’s old defensive ramparts. Friesland is Europe’s largest and most versatile water park with facilities for every type of boat, right up to the million-dollar yachts of the richest of the rich. For 400 years Elfstedentocht When the Elfstedentocht was first skated is not exactly known. But people probably skated to the 11 Frisian cities on a single day as early as the 16th century. The official 200 km Elfstedentocht on skates has existed for over a hundred years. The first organised skating tour took place on 2 January 1909; the last on 4 January 1997. Then almost 17,000 people completed the 200 km route within the set time: arrival before midnight. Competition skaters take less than seven hours in favourable weather conditions; recreational skaters have 18 hours. Whether the Eleven Cities Tour can ever be skated again depends on climatic developments. Tourist Elfstedentocht Thanks to the tourism office Friesland Holland, one does not have to wait for three weeks of severe frost to taste the atmosphere of yesteryear: it organises Elfstedentocht tours every day every year. The start and finish of the skating tour are always in Leeuwarden, but for practical reasons (parking etc.) tourist tours usually start and end in the south of Friesland. Elfsteden cross To participate in the Elfstedentocht on skates, one must be a member of the Royal Association De Friesche Elf Steden and have a starting card. Every participant, who completes the race or tour within the specified time and has collected all the stamps, receives an elfstedenkruisje. Only race riders with a maximum excess of 20% of the winner’s or winner’s riding time are eligible for an eleven-city cross. Tour riders must arrive in Leeuwarden before 00.00 (midnight) in order to go home with the coveted cross. The medal was designed in 1909. It has the shape of a Maltese cross with a circle in the middle. This circle contains, in enamel, the coat of arms of Friesland. The inscription reads ‘De Friesche Elf Steden’. In 2009, the association received the designation ‘royal’ and the cross was modified to include the royal crown. These royal crosses are only awarded after the next tour. The image of the elfstedenkruisje, the logo, the flag and the name, Koninklijke Vereniging De Friesche Elf Steden, are protected and may not be used or exploited by third parties without the association’s permission. From the year 1909 to the present, a total of 56,314 silver Elfsteden crosses have been awarded. This medal can only be obtained by skating the entire Elfstedentocht within the set time limit. Those who completed the tour by bicycle, car, motorbike, moped, on foot, by boat or otherwise as part of an Elfsteden package from Fryslân’s tourism office, Friesland Holland, will receive a named certificate on presentation of a full stamp card and on payment of €10.

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The Eleven Cities Tour from day to day

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The Eleven Cities Tour from day to day

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Documentation set

About the history of the Elfstedentocht and contemporary tours

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