After a quick visit to the Albert Hijn, the closest supermarket to the marina, we cast off and made our way back through the lifting bridges to the binnehaven in front of the Waterpoort.

Moored in front of the Waterpoort.

The town's WiFi was excellent here and we even managed to VOIP Brett and wish Shanie "All the best" for his finals. Clive planned to watch the grand Prix highlights later. Being the first Sunday of the month, it was "Open Sondag" and all the shops in the old town were open and there were stages with music and fashion shows set up all over. There were thousands of people browsing around and the shops were doing good business. Obviously a successful way to get shoppers into town. We went into the C&A and I bought a top for myself and a shirt for Clive. We sat outside an atmospheric bar and had a very slow, but delicious, Affligem. Clive managed to talk the waitress out of a glass (every beer has it's own glass) for his boat beers.

Being a tourist.

We then sat on the aftdeck and watched the show as one of Friesland's busiest and picturesque lift bridges is right in front of the Waterpoort. You can definitely pick out the charter boats! A space opened up on the wall in front of a power point (included in the price if your cable can reach one) so we walked the boat the 50m down to it. And whadda you know - no WiFi. We had just moved out of range of the router. The race was just starting so we had to get out our Doohickey for the WiFi. Almost everywhere we have been has free WiFi so we have hardly used the doohickey at all. Clive went online to check our balance - we had bought 5.3 gigs for 25 euros when we arrived at the airport and we 2 1\2 weeks later we still had 4.9. This balance lasts for a month and then has to be renewed, so I think some movie streaming may be in our future!

Now, I have to tell you about my "Omnia Oven". Wandering around a camping store shortly after we arrived, I was transfixed by a video of a clever camping oven which was, of course, on sale underneath. Well, I had to have one. Skip was HIGHLY skeptical and the box went into a locker and was promptly forgotten until I had a lust for gratin potatoes the other night and found I had no dish for the electric oven. AhHa - what about the Omnia, I thought. Took awhile to find it, but OMG wonderful "baked" gratin potatoes. It was designed by two Swedes who won a design prize for it. The recipe book is all Swedish recipes (meh) - pickled herring pie, anyone? - but there are loads of posts from campers and mostly small boat yachties who have no onboard ovens. Everyone loves it and you can bake cakes, bread, biscuits, pies, meatloaf, etc very successfully in it. Not that I'm planning any baking, but gratin potatoes (we had them two days in a row), "bottom-of-the-fridge" quiches etc, yes for sure.

Yummy!

We're staying in Sneek another day as it's such a lovely town. We'll put the bikes ashore later and take a ride down to Ijlst, a very pretty village we passed through a few days ago. We didn't stop at the time as the washing machines were calling.

And for those who would find it hard to believe ...

Doing the hoovering.