After having left Delfzilj yesterday we continued on the canals towards Groningen. The landscape surrounding the canals is really beautiful, it feels almost like sailing in the middle of a field with farms, windmills, lambs, cows and horses. Did I say we were sailing? That wasn’t true, we had to use the engine since there are so many bridges to cross and normally, the bridges won’t open right away, sometimes you have to wait a little.

We arrived in Groningen, the fifth largest city of The Netherlands, around 3 pm yesterday. Such a cool place! The canal goes through the city centre and there are several bridges to cross. Cantare felt little VIP when we went in the city and the bridges had to opened up exclusive for us and let cars, bicycles and walkers wait until we had passed. We moored outside a Dutch boat which belonged to a very nice Dutch couple. Since we want to reach Amsterdam in a fair time to be able to spend some more time over there we didn’t stay very long in Groningen. However, we took the time to visit an interesting Cuba exhibition at Groninger Museum. We are planning on visiting Cuba for a quite a while when we reach the Caribbean so we found it funny false starting our visit little with some Cuban art and history from 1868 to today. Cuba began struggling for independence in 1868 and from then until today, Cuban art has been greatly colored and influenced by propaganda. The Cuba exhibition contained about 300 works of art that perfectly showed the late history of Cuba and as a matter of fact, Cuba is of great current interest, we are both looking forward to going there.

After the visit to the museum we continued and had to cross 20 bridges before getting out of Groningen, the last one at 6.59 pm, just one minute before the bridges would close for the evening. We really wanted to pass them all since they are closed until 9.00 am and at that point we were planning on waking up rather early, to be able put some miles behind us and faster reach Enkuizen and Amsterdam. When the bridges closed and we couldn’t get any further we called it a day. While Maria did some painting at the fore deck and enjoyed the sunset I turned up the music in the kitchen (yes, we were in the middle of a field so nobody to disturb) and prepared a little Chicken a la Cantare dinner. We had a relaxed Friday evening with nice dinner and wine.

Today the sun has been shining almost all day and we have continued in the beautiful but sometime very shallow canal. From time to time we have been able to wave at our dear Dutch friends we met in Delfzilj, skipper Henk and his friend also named Henk. Henkx2 have been very helpful and shown us the best ways in the canals in order to avoid the shallowest parts. Otherwise we would most certain have touched more sand than we did, thanks guys!

Now we are celebrating the Saturday evening in Leeuwarden, tomorrow we’ll continue on the Canals, don't know how far though, when sailing anything can happen:-) Nighty-night! /First Mate