Description

Price Includes:

2 x overnight stays with breakfast (dinner available if booked in advance)
Luggage transport
STO Garant protection
Reservation fees
Tourist tax
Extensive travel documentation (maps and the Friesland Travel Guide & Tourist Atlas, a four-language travel book, 260 pages)
Free parking for your car at the hotel
Free bicycle storage and charging facilities at the hotel

Price Excludes:

Travel and cancellation insurance
Lunch, dinner, and drinks
Bicycle guarantee, if booked (if the guarantee is booked, you will receive a replacement bicycle within 1.5 hours in case of breakdown)

Cancellation Policy:

Free cancellation is possible up to six weeks before the arrival date.
Weather conditions are not grounds for cancellation with Friesland Holland Travel. Cancellations must be handled through travel and cancellation insurance (which can be purchased from your insurance provider).

For Whom?
This Eleven Cities cycling holiday is designed for those who want a short getaway while staying active and enjoying a wide range of experiences. Southwest Friesland, home to the most beautiful Eleven Cities, is the perfect destination! This region boasts the most attractions per kilometre and the greatest diversity in nature, landscapes, cultural and historical events, and water sports activities. That’s why it’s the most popular holiday destination in Friesland.

Route Highlights:
As part of this package, you’ll visit the following six cities: Sneek, IJlst, Sloten, Stavoren, Hindeloopen, and Workum. These towns are part of the southern Eleven Cities route. Additionally, you’ll explore the forests of Gaasterland, the IJsselmeer coast, and the Frisian Lakes.

Start Day:
Any day of the week

Start and Finish:
A hotel located along the southern Eleven Cities route

STO Garant:
This offer is covered by the STO Garant scheme. You can find the terms and conditions of this guarantee by clicking here.

The Eleven Cities Tour Day by Day

After booking, you will receive personalized travel information for each day of your journey. On the first day, you are expected to arrive at your hotel by 12:00 noon. If you are arriving by car, you will park your car at the hotel for the duration of your cycling holiday. You will not be able to check in immediately, but you will be able to pick up your rental bikes and start one of the loop routes connecting a few of the Eleven Cities. Your luggage will remain in your car, while you carry only your essentials in waterproof panniers provided on the rental bikes. After check-in (between 15:00 and 19:00) and settling into your room(s), you will enjoy your first evening dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Well-rested and fully informed, you will begin your second cycling day after breakfast, following your personalized itinerary. This day also ends with a delicious evening meal. On the final day, Day 3, you will cycle the last loop route after breakfast, with your rental bikes available until 18:00. The bikes must be securely locked in the designated bike storage area – these are high-quality bicycles. Keys should be returned to the reception, marking the end of this enjoyable tour.

Tips:

If you don’t want to return home after Day 3, you can book an additional night with Friesland Holland Travel Service to further explore the beautiful National Landscape of Gaasterland and the IJsselmeer coast.
Before your trip, use the guest information and detailed travel guide to select which attractions and scenic spots you’d like to visit along the Eleven Cities route. These are available in the comprehensive travel guide and on the Eleven Cities route map provided after booking.

Breakdown Assistance with Mobility Guarantee:

Each Friesland Holland cycling holiday package includes breakdown assistance with a mobility guarantee. With this unique service, you are insured for replacement transportation (luxury bike) if you experience a breakdown or accident with your own bike or a rental bike during your cycling holiday in Friesland (excluding the islands) and it cannot be repaired on-site or within one hour at a local bike shop.

You will then receive a replacement electric bike with multiple gears and panniers free of charge for the duration of your holiday. Alternatively, you will be transported at no extra cost by the Friesland Holland Assistance vehicle to your day’s final destination. The Friesland Holland Assistance driver will typically transport your broken bike back to the starting hotel but, on special request and in agreement with the service provider, they may deliver your bike to a nearby bike shop for repair. Any repair costs for your own bike are at your own expense. With Friesland Holland Assistance, you’ll always be able to continue your journey.

This service is available from late March to early October, 7 days a week.

Tip: The luxury rental bikes from Rent-a-Topbike are equipped with puncture-resistant tires. If you plan to ride the Eleven Cities route on your own bike, we recommend fitting puncture-resistant tires, such as Marathon E-Plus with multiple protective layers (Level 7). Friesland Holland bikes are equipped with the same. The risk of a flat tire is significantly reduced with these tires.

Additional Night

If you’d prefer not to return home at the end of the last day of your tour, Friesland Holland can book an extra night at the starting and finishing hotel or at another Eleven Cities route hotel. It is highly recommended to reserve this extra night during the booking process due to high hotel occupancy rates.

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 the sights along the way. This way you can already enjoy all the beauty Friesland has to offer at home and can 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 while traveling in Friesland. It is a personal travel program with your lodging addresses, the routes to travel and the distance to cycle 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
Vacation passport of Friesland
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 the experience of a large part of the rich history of the Netherlands. Nowhere will you find such a varied route as the Elfstedenroute, world-renowned Frisian heritage, especially since the last Elfstedentocht on skates in January 1997.

Arrangements

The tour operator of the Fryslân Tourist 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 top-notch replacement 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 Eleven Cities proof and standard equipped with two beautiful and handy panniers. 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 based entirely on Shimano technology. The drive technology is also from this top Japanese brand.

Every stage, every day thrills

Every stage by bike, car, motorcycle, sloop, sailboat 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 meters 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 set aside a day for Leeuwarden, in 2018 the Cultural Capital of Europe for good reason!

Theater on the water

There is theater on the water every hour of every day throughout Friesland: modern yachts, sloops and large traditional sailing ships passing through locks and bridges and docking at the city’s old defensive ramparts. Friesland is the largest and most versatile water park in Europe with facilities for every type of boat, up to the million-dollar yachts of the richest of the rich.

Elfstedentocht for 400 years

It is not exactly known when the Elfstedentocht was first skated. But it is likely that as early as the sixteenth century people skated to the eleven Frisian cities on a single day. The official 200 km Elfstedentocht on skates has existed for over a hundred years. The first organized skating tour took place January 2, 1909; the last January 4, 1997. Then nearly 17,000 people completed the 200 km route within the set time: arrival before noon. Competition skaters take less than seven hours in favorable weather conditions; recreational skaters have 18 hours. Whether the Elfstedentocht can ever be skated again depends on climatic developments.

Tourist Elfstedentocht

Thanks to the tourism agency Friesland Holland, there is no need to wait for three weeks of severe frost to taste the atmosphere of yesteryear: it organizes 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 Eleven Cities Tour 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 allotted time and collects all the stamps will receive an Eleven Cities Cross. 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 return 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 Eleven Cities Tour within the set time limit. Those who have completed the tour by bicycle, car, motorcycle, moped, on foot, by boat or otherwise as part of an Eleven Cities package from Fryslân’s tourism office, Friesland Holland, will receive a personalized certificate upon presentation of a full stamp card and payment of €10.

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The Eleven Cities Tour Day by Day

Breakdown Assistance with Mobility Guarantee:

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Description

The Eleven Cities Tour Day by Day

Breakdown Assistance with Mobility Guarantee:

Documentation set

About the history of the Elfstedentocht and contemporary tours

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