A Week's Worth of Towns, by Carolyn

At the end of our first day of motoring we'd got as far as Lemmer, a destination chosen by Tom because of the giant steam operated pumping station located there.  This is the oldest steam pumping station in the Netherlands, and is still used several times a year when all the more modern stations are working at full capacity.  Since a large part of the Netherlands lies below sea level, the water controller people have to pump water back out to the sea whenever there is too much rain.

The pumping station, of course, was a pretty industrial event and it was located just a short bike ride from our fairly ugly marina.  We were surprised, then, when we cycled a bit further to get into town and found that it was really cute - restaurants with patios at the edge of the streets and canals full of boats. 

Boats on the canal in Lemmer

We left Lemmur after a day and headed across the lake (used to be an inlet of the North Sea, but the enterprising Dutch built a giant dyke, pumped all the seawater out, and turned it into a lake) to the town of Enkhuizen.  Now, due to the passion/fixation/single minded obsession of my spouse, our vacations tend to lead to places with lots of boats.  But I have never seen so many sailing ships in one place in my life.  The photo doesn't really capture the number of boats. 

Here we stayed two nights at a marina beside the train station.  We explored the town (again, cute canals full of boats, restaurants with patios, charming shopping street) and spent a morning at a museum similar to Upper Canada Village but all about Dutch fishing life in the late 1800 and early 1900s.  The girls painted wooden clogs and dutch tiles but were disappointed that the bakery wasn't operational. 

After Enkhuizen we landed at Edam, home of the famous cheese.  There wasn't too much to this town, but we found a bakery where we bought the most wonderous dessert by accident.  It's called boterkoeken (butter cake) and is basically a very moist shortbread cookie made in a small pie pan.  What a great idea! 

After Enkhuizen, most people would go to Vollendam, an old fishing town that caters to tourists, but Tom had a notion that the boatbuilding scenery would be better in Monnickendam, and I wasn't sufficiently on the ball to redirect him.  I don't even have a picture of Monnickendam, it was so unremarkable, but we did a side trip to Marken, an old fishing village turned tourist destination on an island. 

Finally, on Wednesday we left Monnickendam and landed in Amsterdam, the big city.  We've now had five nights here and in addition to one day on the boat during the rain, we've been all over the city by boat, on foot and by bicycle.  We spent today, Mother's Day, at the Maritime Museum (mother's choice) but have decided to leave the Anne Frank Museum, Nemo science centre, and Rijksmuseum for our visit when we end our European adventure. 

 

For me, the real highlight of Amsterdam occurred when Tom packed all our dirty laundry into the saddle bags on his bike, cycled to the Laundromat and came back a couple of hours later with clean clothes!  I'm rapidly becoming a convert of a car free life!