Off on a bus tour through three little towns and a museum devoted to traditional windmills.
Our first stop was in Zaanse Schans. The Zaanse Schans is a residential area in which the 18th and 19th centuries are brought to life. The Zaanse Schans is a unique part of the Netherlands, full of wooden houses, mills, barns and workshops. The windmills are used to saw lumber, grind stones into pigments for paints and other uses.
Unfortunately it was pouring and extremely windy while we were there.
After a brisk walk in the rain and visiting a few shops it was back on the bus and on to the town of Edam where our guide took us on a walking tour of the old town.
The small church with the tall tower
The church yard was completely covered with seashells. In Holland they have no stones, they would have to import gravel but shells are easily come by.
The old cheese market, it is no longer used but was a very busy place in it’s day. The farmers would bring their cheese to the market by boat. They would bring it to the cheese master who would weigh and taste the cheese and decide on the price the farmer would get for the cheese.
There really is water everywhere in the Netherlands. Much of the land in the Netherlands is on polders. Polders are land that used to be underwater or swampy. Using dams and canals they drained the water off the land. Polders are surrounded by dams that keep the water out and canals within the polder regulate the water levels. Water from the canals in the polder is pumped up to canals on top of the dams to keep the water levels as they should be. The dam surrounding the polder is on the right hand side of the picture. On top of the dam is likely a road and a canal that carries the water away from the polder.
After Edam we visited a dairy farm that makes cheese. They have been making cheese at that farm since the 1800’s. They also showed us how wooden clogs were made, then we got to sample their cheeses some stroop waffles and some cranberry wine. Marco, in traditional dress for the region explains how they make their cheese.
After learning about how the cheese is made we saw a demonstration on how clogs are made. Clogs were first made by hand and it took a skilled artisan a day to make one pair of clogs then they invented a machine that could make clogs from a chunk of wood and then one skilled person could make 100 pairs of clogs in one day.
Next it was on to the shop where we could taste their cheese and of course buy souveniers.
Then it was on to Vollendam, a fishing village. It had many gift shops and restaurants. The traditional food here is seafood. Especially, pickled herring, smoked eel, and fish and chips. Tried the eel and some salmon. The eel tasted a lot like salmon only smoother or more buttery.
Next, it was on to Marken an even smaller village that is out on an island, now connected to the mainland by a dam with a road built on top of it.
Each bridge is named after a queen Of the Netherlands, this one Queen Juliana.
Traditionally the wooden houses in this area are painted black or green. Many years ago the people were too poor to afford paint for their houses so they painted them with tar, to get the green color they mixed grass with the tar and that made it green. Also, before the dam we were standing on was built these houses were all made of wood and were built up on pilings. This was so that floods would not damage the houses. Once the dam was built and the houses were protected they started using the space under the houses and closed them in with brick.
The Queen Beatrix bridge
Then it was back to Amsterdam where the bus dropped us off by the ferry dock. We took the ferry back to Centraal Station and the tram back to our hotel.
The flower market by our hotel was open for the first time today.
Tomorrow we say goodbye to Amsterdam and fly home.
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