ISLANDS WITHOUT CARS Season 2


#201 The Netherlands’ Island of Schiermonnikoog
While Amsterdam is technically not an island, this watery canal filled city is arguably the epicenter of western bicycle culture. With more bicycles than people, Amsterdam’s car-free ethos has been evolving for centuries. We caught up with two Americans playing a significant part in that evolution. Then we travel across the North Sea for a 45-minute ferry ride to the 9.9-mile car-free island of Schiermonnikoog. With only 900 residents, Schiermonnikoog is the least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands. There is one supermarket, one bakery, and an unblemished beach stretching for miles where the Frisian Islanders come to commune with nature and each other. Finally, we visit the tiny floating village of Geithoorn. Established as a settlement of peat harvesters, Geithoorn consists of a series of fairytale thatched 18th and l9th century farms and houses built on individual peat islands and connected by over 170 small bridges. Often called the Venice of the North, cars are not allowed, and have to be parked outside of the village. And while a bike path has been added, most transport through the canals is done by boat.

#202 Michigan’s Mackinac Island
Mackinac Island was the setting for the cult 1979 film Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer. This segment offers a “somewhere in time” experience as well. June is Lilac Festival time on Mackinac Island. And our experience included the 18th Century experience of the iconic Grant hotel, complete with carriage lessons as we clip clopped past the painted Victorian mansions on the bluffs, through the dappled interior of the island and into the one of the Grandest Victorian era hotels in America. The Grand Hotel proudly and elegantly sells and giftwraps summer memories that often last a lifetime. After further immersion in Americana, American history, and island-specialty fudge making, we experienced and documented the Lilac Parade celebrating an idealized American sense of community that feels “somewhere in time.”

#203 Sweden’s Southwestern Archipelago
In this episode, we go island hopping in the land of the Vikings. Just off Sweden’s southwestern coastline are a series of small islands dotting the North Sea. We explore Marstrandson for a midsummer sun – and a midsummer celebration - that almost never ends while learning about the island’s most famous and some would say beloved cross-dressing criminal, and taking a private museum tour featuring an exhibit on the incomparable Ingrid Bergman. On Styrso, the largest of the southern islands, which is considered the “main” island in this archipelago, we spend some time understanding the understated elements of Swedish hospitality. And finally, on the southern-most island of Vrango, we don’t just cook the island fish…we catch it!

#204 Italy’s Venetian Lagoon (Venice and Burano)
The Venetian Lagoon in northeastern Italy is dotted with dozens of inhabited islands. We’re exploring two of them for their international importance and influence. First, is the incomparable and mythologized city of Venice --- which is probably the most famous car-free island in the world. – where we get an idea of the 50,000 tourists a day that are drawn to this uniquely beautiful artistic achievement comprised of 118 small islands separated by 114 canals and joined again by 400 bridges. Long considered the most beautiful and romantic city in the world, Venice is also Europe's largest urban car-free area and is recognized by UNESCO. Then we explore the tiny island Burano, which has been a colorfully curated home to generations of lace makers, artists, and fishermen. We discover exactly why their lacemaking is unique and their meals unforgettable.

#205 Germany’s Heligoland Island
Located between 30 and 40 miles off the North German coast, and about 100 miles northwest of Hamburg, Heligoland (Helgoland in German) is a rocky island in the North Sea and Germany's only non-coastal island. It features vertical cliffs dropping nearly 200 feet into the waters below and is the only such formation in the North Sea. Possession of the island changed hands several times between Germany, Denmark and Great Britain. And many of the possessions of the possessors ended up bombed into the ocean in 1947 as Great Britain used the former enemy territory for target practice in what was the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. But the islanders returned and rebuilt this unique place, even making unique jewelry out of the fragments of its past that wash up on its shores daily. Except for two taxis and a police car, automobiles are verboten. But access to the "upper land" (from the port or “lower land”) is made comfortable by an elevator cut into the rock. Or there are between 184 and 260 steps on three different stairways connecting the lower port with the upper grazing parts of the island.

#206 Scotland’s Isles of Eigg and Easdale
The Isle of Eigg is one of the most beautiful Hebridean Islands. About five miles long by three miles wide, Eigg lies 10 miles off the Scottish West coast and features beautiful moors, beaches composed of white quartz and historic ruins that include Iron Age forts, a 6th century Christian church and Viking burial mounds. Eigg is home to musicians and craft workers, writers, filmmakers and photographers. It even has its own record label and artist residency, craft shop co-operative, an annual Fèis, the Howlin Fling Festival, and a regular program of concerts, ceilidhs, plays, workshops, and films. At less than a mile in length, Easdale is the smallest permanently inhabited island of the Inner Hebrides, off Scotland's West coast. Many visiting residents live in other parts of Scotland but have ancestral connections going back several generations. Every September, they have a world-famous stone skimming competition that we are there to document!