Alkmaar and Volendam with a side trip to Marken

Well I hope you like the title as I had to look all the names up in a book. Yesterday we looked at what the bus trips out of Amsterdam offered and looked it up for ourselves. With a Navman and Peter at the wheel we can do anything a bus can do and more.

We started at a cheese market in Alkamaar where men in national dress ran around with racks with big rounds of cheese on them. For those of you in NZ you would have to get a mortgage to buy one! They unloaded the cheese from their trucks or cars and it was auctioned. They then loaded it onto racks (see pictures) and took it into be weighed. Once weighed they seemed to run around with it some more before loading it on to carts and running again over to a truck. Seems a lot of work to sell some cheese but that is what they do here. It was a lovely town with small lanes and lots of lovely little shops and market stalls. Once again Peter, Garey and I enjoyed waffles, this time with ice cream and Gill had a milk shake. We could probably have stayed all day but had other things to see.

We then set off on another journey, this time to a fishing village called Volendam. Gill and I visited a very interesting museum about the history of the area particularly the national dress. Peter rested and had a beer and Garey went shopping. How normal does that sound! This is a port area and from there we caught a ferry on a half hour journey to Marken which was and island but is now joined by road. This is a historical fishing area with an orginal house set up so we could see how things were many years ago. We had an enjoyable walk around and sat down for Dutch mini pancakes and a drink. We caught the boat back, wandered some more and had tea. We have decided we seem to eat quite often.

One thing we have noticed in The Netherlands is that many of the houses are on a lean, some forward, some sideways and some even backwards. If you look closely in the picture of houses you will see that one has had bricks layed up the middle to hold them together.

That is all I have to say today as Gill has done her postcards (sorry my friends and family not done any) and we are going to play cards.