The Bike Boat on the Eem River
Ever wanted to bike from one town to another in the Netherlands and not have to retrace your route? Then the Eemlijn Fietsboot (bike boat on the Eem River) is for you! The boat sails up the Eem River from Amersfoort to either Spakenburg or Huizen and back, with stops in Soest, Baarn and Eemdijk along the way. You can board with your bike at any stop and get off at another stop to bike around or head back to the city you started from.
We boarded the bike boat in Amersfoort right next to the Eemplein (a big shopping center/plaza – everyone from here knows where it is). The boat was supposed to leave at 10 a.m. so we planned to be there at least 5 minutes early but instead rolled up with only 2 minutes to spare. Good thing there was still room for our bikes on the boat – Jack would have been really disappointed if we wouldn’t have been able to go.
The bike boat is run by a group of volunteers who all look retired – along with at least half of the clientele on the bike boat. Haha. But I think that’s awesome because that means all of these older people are planning to do some significant biking! The boat is packed with maybe 50 people, but besides Jack and Ben, I only see 2 other kids. The bikes are stored on the first level of the boat and the people ride up top. The seating is very basic – plastic lawn chairs arranged in rows. There is a canopy for shade, but since we’re some of the last people to board we end up sitting in the sun. Cue the sweating. You can buy drinks and a few snacks on board, but you’re also welcome to bring your own picnic.
At 10 a.m. the boat is about to leave and the staff starts loading the gangway into the boat for storage. Wait! Our bikes are still on shore. What are they doing? I wave/yell down to the staff and hope they can understand my English since I’m pretty sure we are the only non-Dutch speakers on the boat. They say something I can only assume means “Stop freaking out, we’re going to put your bikes on last on top of this ramp because you’re getting off at the first stop. Take a seat, lady.”. I sit down.
The boat ride starts and Jack and Ben are loving it. Jack spends the whole ride looking over the railing and asking a million questions. Do people sleep on those other boats? (Yes) Why is this boat going so slow? (It’s big) Is the bridge going to go up? (I hope so) What’s that guy saying? (I have no idea – the tour guide is speaking Dutch) I’m hungry. (Good thing I brought food. It’s only been 5 minutes since you last ate.)
The ride to Soest took about 35 minutes. If it had just been Brian and I, it would have been fun to ride the boat at least one stop farther to Baarn, but this length of boat ride was just the right amount of time with the kids. They had fun, and the ride was over before either of them started to get super squirmy or have some kind of meltdown. The boat docked on the side of the river outside the town of Soest and there were a dozen or so people waiting to board the boat with their bikes. We were the only ones to get off. Haha. I guess the older people have more stamina than I thought!
We got on our bikes and biked towards Soest. The ride took us past a ton of horse farms. It seriously seemed like there were horses at every house and Ben kept saying “Neigh!” (which was super cute) or “E-I-E-I-O” (also super cute). We rode around the edge of the town through a little neighborhood of single-family detached homes. It was cute to see this neighborhood because it looked much different from where we’re living in Amersfoort. Some of the houses had thatched roofs and all of them were well maintained and cute. Come to think of it, pretty much all the homes we’ve seen have looked well maintained on the outside.
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called De Korte Duinen that was about half way between where the boat dropped us off in Soest and our house in Amersfoort. The weather was gorgeous and the restaurant had a big patio, but we decided to eat inside because they had a nice play area for kids with a big Lego table and some other random kitchen toys. This area kept Jack and Ben entertained until the food arrived, so I consider that a big win. Brian ordered the kipsate (chicken on a skewer with some tasty Asian peanut sauce), Ben had poffertjes (puffy little round pancake-like dough balls with powdered sugar), I had a roast beef sandwich and Jack ate a giant plain grilled chicken breast (life with food allergies – he’s a trooper). The food was good and much better than our lunch the previous day when we tried kroketten, a Dutch favorite which was basically mushed up meat rolled into a fat tube shape and deep fried. I will not be eating that again.
After lunch we biked the rest of the way home. In total, we were only on the bikes for about 30 minutes, so it wasn’t a long bike ride. But, I really liked the length of this outing for a morning with the boys. We left the house at 9:45 a.m. and by the time we took the boat ride, ate lunch and biked home, it was 1 p.m. and time for naps.
