Leeuwarden, Netherlands  - The pride of Friesland, a northern province of the Netherlands, is a cross - the Eleven Cities Cross, to be precise. Arend Hansma, a 60-year-old Frisian, is among those who have been awarded one after reaching the finish line of the Elfstedetocht or Eleven Cities Tour, the world's toughest ice-skating marathon.

Hansma fondly remembers the times when Friesland's rivers and grachten or canals, were frozen so solid that they could bear the weight of thousands of skaters for the 200-kilometre tour through all 11 of the province's cities. The last time that happened was in 1997.

This year, the centennial of the tour's inauguration, Friesland is offering more alternative 11 cities tours than ever - that is, tours independent of the whims of the weather, and all year round. The Elfstedetocht's starting cry, "It giet oan!" (roughly, "Let the tour begin!"), can now mean setting out to see Friesland on foot, by bicycle, via grachten aboard sailboats or traditional flat-bottomed praams, in antique cars or on sporty inline skates.

The regional tourism association suggests 11 ways to experience the cities of Friesland. For some people, the culinary tour is probably the most surprising. Frisian chefs debunk the stereotyped notion that Dutch cuisine is little more than herring, chips and cheese sandwiches.

Food critics have the highest praise for Marco Poldervaart's steak tartare with spiny lobsters and oysters marinated in champagne, which he conjures up in De Gastronom, a family restaurant in the port city of Harlingen. And at De Nieuwe Mulderij, a restaurant in Leeuwarden, chef Henk Markus can hold his own anytime, for example with grilled scallops on warm fennel salad.

Travellers to Friesland encounter Beerenburg everywhere, an alcoholic drink made from jenever and various herbs. "Our future king likes to drink it, too," said Sjoerd Smidt at the Boomsma Beerenburg Distillery's museum in Leeuwarden, referring to Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. "There's nothing better to warm you up after a long tour."

The prince is said to have liberally partaken of the libation after mastering the Elfstedentocht in 1986. He was not recognized at first because he registered under the name of W. A. van Buren.

Visitors can come across the prince's pseudonym in several Frisian cities, including Hindeloopen, where the Frisian Skating Museum is a big attraction for Elfstedentocht fans. Among the exhibits are skates and the tour card with stamps from all of the stations that the prince passed through.

But the most popular exhibit is a preserved toe that belonged to skater Tinus Udding. "It was minus 18 degrees (centigrade)," said Udding of the fateful 1963 Eleven Cities Tour. "I was the 31st to cross the finish line and had extremely cold feet. "Although I was immediately taken to a hospital, it was too late to save the toe."

Tour winners are heroes in Friesland, and all those who simply finish gain a lot of recognition. A similar sort of tenacity is on display in the Frisian city of Franeker, where an amateur astronomer by the name of Eise Eisinga combined scientific and mechanical talent with astounding single-mindedness to produce what is called the world's oldest functioning planetarium.

Between 1774 and 1781 in his canal side house, Eisinga built an accurately moving model of the solar system using a wooden gear mechanism with more than 10,000 nails as teeth, a pendulum clock and nine weights.

Internet: www. visitfryslan. nl, www. friesmuseum. nl, www. planetarium-friesland. nl, www. fryslanculinair. nl (dpa)