Marken, Volendam and Edam

Monday 14^th May

We decided we would walk to Central Station, about 3 km and catch the bus to Marken, the driver advised us to buy a 10 euro day trip card that has a small chip embedded in it which required us to “touch on, touch off”.  Most of the people in Holland now use a personal “Chip Card” which can be used on Intercity trains, local trains, buses and trams, pity the Victorian Government didn’t speak to the Dutch Government before wasting all that money on Myki.

Marken is a small island with a fishing village which was connected to the mainland by a Dyke in 1957.  Walking from the bus stop we passed a clog factory with a “clog tree” in the garden.  The old part of the village consist of tiny cottages with narrow footpaths meandering between them, the largest wheeled vehicle that could negotiate these footpaths would be a wheelbarrow.

Inside the Fishermens’ Church there were models of various types of fishing boats suspended from the ceiling and instead of pews there were individual chairs, the collection was taken up using red velvet bags on the end of 2 m. poles.

 

From Marken we caught a ferry across to Volendam about 30 minutes, which was also a fishing village but has grown over the years into a sizeable town and the harbour area is now overrun with tourists.  On our last visit to Volendam Ann made the acquaintance a Fisherman, Bab (Grandpa) he was still sitting on the same bench in the sun so Graeme stopped to say hello.  Walking along the harbour we met his wife, Ootje (Grandma) and Ann stopped to discuss grandchildren with her, she also met two of her grandchildren Klaasie and Klaasie, (both boys and girls can be called Klaasie).

Returning to the harbour we walked to the smoke house to buy some smoked eels, something we had done on our two previous visits and Graeme stopped to chat with a fisherman with a basket of eels.

Our next stop was the small village of Edam, world famous for its cheese.  The old part of the town like Marken has houses and buildings dating back to the 1600s and earlier.  Walking around the town we crossed several manually operated balance bridges which can be raised to allow boats to pass along the canal and in a square found the old Cheese weighing house, in the past the cheese market was held in this square.

On the wall of the great church were three statues representing Adam, the serpent coiled around a tree and Eve sitting holding an apple.  Was this Adam and Eve in Edam?

On the way to the bus stop, to catch the bus to return to Amsterdam, we stopped in the village square to admire the 1700s town hall, a 45 minutes trip returned us to Amsterdam Central station and we walked back to the youth hostel.

Tomorrow we fly to Oslo to start our “Norwegian Experience”, I’m not sure what access we’ll have to the internet during the next week.