Fun and Sustainable Hotspots on Ameland

Maybe you’ve read this in my past weekly diary. I’ve gone on a holiday to Ameland for a week! I had loads of fun! Ameland really provided us with everything we wanted. Fun, good weather and good food. And so, I am sharing this hotspot with you today. This place is amazing, especially if you’re looking for a sustainable holiday destination! Here are all the fun and sustainable hotspots on Ameland.

Traveling

If you live in the Netherlands or Germany, it is very easy to go to Ameland by car and public transportation. If you live a little bit further, the train might be the best solution. Anything is better than going by plane. My dad and grandparents prefer the car and so went in the car with 5 people (my dad, grandpa, grandma, boyfriend and me). You can also go public transportation to Holwerd, that would be most sustainable. Holwerd is the place where the boat is which will take you to the island Ameland. From door to door it took us 5 hours, not long if you ask me!

If you want to take it a step further you could also go by bike and extend the holiday. Biking to Holwerd and then going by boat to Ameland. Taking a car onto the island is quite expensive and so I would suggest you go by train or leave your car at the mainland. On Ameland itself there are busses to take you anywhere and they’re 100% electric. We traveled by bike most of the time since the island isn’t that big. It is amazing to bike on the island! Traveling to and on Ameland is sustainable as long as you don’t fly there.

Restaurants

Nes Café

This restaurant was the place where my boyfriend and I went to celebrate our 2,5 year anniversary. I picked it myself haha. They have two vegan options on the menu and the food was very good. I had a lovely soup and as a main a curry. The food was great but the service afterwards not so much (you can read more about that in weekly diary #50). The amount of trash was also quite low, they use mainly reusables. If I would suggest any restaurant on the island it’s this one!
Rating: 8/10

Restaurant Cantina Dolores

Grandpa had picked this restaurant and I forgot to call beforehand to announce that I eat vegan. My bad, this is something I should have done. They had no vegan dish on the menu but that doesn’t have to be a problem if you call. I didn’t and so I got a quesadilla which was made vegan by removing most ingredients. Eventually it was a quesadilla with some vegetables, quite boring. It was a bit too spicy for me as well. The restaurant was very low in staff and so it took ages but the staff was still very friendly. The food was a bit of a bummer because it is a Mexican restaurants and Mexican dishes can easily be veganized. Maybe I would have had a better experience if I had called.
Rating: 6/10

Beach-club The Sunset

This beach club has some options on the menu which can easily be veganized if you aks for it and I thought that was great. They serve a lot of organic drinks and so I was impressed. I ordered a cassis and got an organic one! All drinks were quite exclusive, not your regular Coca-Cola and that made me very happy. F*ck multinationals. We eventually ordered nachos and asked if they could make half of it vegan for me and the other half non-vegan for my boyfriend. It worked out great, good service! The beach club has a great location, you watch over the beach and the sea (like with most beach clubs haha, but still). I love it. Which made it even better: they don’t serve straws and the napkins were served in a separate glass and so you could choose if you wanted to use them or not.
Rating: 9/10

Trash

This part will be quite short. I wasn’t in charge of the groceries and so I didn’t have much to do with our waste. Groceries make the biggest waste in most households since everything in supermarkets is packed in plastic. However, in the supermarkets you do have the option to choose for organic food and so that’s at least something! We could recycle paper and glass in our holiday park and in the middle of the island there was a recycling station where we could compost our food scraps. All the rest goes to landfill.

Local Shopping

I would really recommend to avoid the supermarket but to support local entrepreneurs where possible. In every village on the island there are different shops and so I’m not discussing them all here. There is no shop for package free groceries but supporting the local economy is just as important. You could take the basics with you from home (like herbs and rice or something) and then buy all the rest as local as possible. The amount of plastic in local shops is usually much lower than in supermarkets, which is a big plus.

Near our accommodation there was a bakery I would like to give a shoutout: Bakkerij J.P. de Boer. Bring your own bags to all shops and you’ll come a long way. If you can’t find everything at the local shops then there is also a Jumbo in Nes as a last resort. They do offer a lot of vegan options but it is a big company.

Nature

If you go on a holiday to Ameland it is mainly a nature-holiday. It is an island with a lot of nature and the sea it surrounding you. I love it! I especially enjoyed the bike rides and beach walks. During the beach walks we also picked up trash at the beach. This makes it even more fun if you’d ask me. It is a great way to try to make your holiday eco-positive too. You decrease your negative impact by going on a local holiday and increase your positive impact by picking trash on the island. Great! The island never bored me and we stayed for a week. The weather is however very important. We were very lucky because we had mostly sun and blue skies. If it rains throughout all of your holiday it’s not that great.

These were all the fun and sustainable hotspots on Ameland that I know of. If you want to go on a sustainable holiday but still want luxury then I can recommend Ameland! Travel to Ameland by public transportation, support the local economy and enjoy! I had an amazing time. We stayed in this accommodation and it was perfect. Luxurious but cozy.

Do you know of any more fun and sustainable hotspots on Ameland?

Yours sincerely,
Romee