We biked around Enkhuizen in the morning, and followed the old city walls and moat/canal around part of the city. Then we went down to a marina where we saw some of the historic boat charters I mentioned yesterday.
After leaving Enkhuizen we stopped in Broekerhaven to look at this boat lift. Usually they just built locks to transfer from one water level to another, but in some cases I guess mixing the water is undesirable (think salt and fresh), or a lock might be impractical for other reasons. This is a big crane designed to lift boats with flat bottoms from one canal to another.
Riding along the dyke around IJsselmeer we spotted the Evangeline out in the water on its way to Volendam.
I think the brick building on the right is an electric pump, but the windmill looked ready to back it up in case of power outage.
We had a coffee break in Hoorn in a cafe on this little square where the old city hall is.
The fellow memorialized by the statue in the foreground above is Jan Pieterszoon Coen. As you can see at the Wikipedia link or in the photo below, he is a bit like Columbus in the U.S. – formerly viewed as a hero of the VOC (Dutch East Indies Company), but when you learn the brutality of things he did to maintain a monopoly on certain spices, he seems more a villain.
We bicycled through a cute little neighborhood of housing constructed and maintained for the poor per the will of the daughter of a wealthy trader. Then we went to the waterfront to see an old watch tower.
Near the tower is a statue of three boys. Willem Bontekoe was a ship captain from Hoorn in the early 1600’s. He ended up having some interesting adventures after being shipwrecked. He kept a journal, and later a very popular children’s book, The Cabin Boys of Bontekoe, was written based on the journal. So this is another monument to fictional characters, although these are at least based on a real adventure.
We stopped at another windmill museum in Schermer for lunch. We ate our box lunches while watching a short movie about windmill history in their little theater.
Then we climbed through one of the mills which showed contemporary furnishings for the people who lived in and maintained the mill.
This mill used an Archimedean screw to lift the water being drained to a higher canal. They also had a small hand-powered model – it’s an interesting way to pump water.
(Wikimedia Commons animated image by Silberwolf – image links to Wikimedia Commons source page)
The weather took a rainy turn after lunch.
But it was a short shower, and we were soon shedding our coats. We rode to De Rijp and stopped at the city hall.
It is not an optical illusion – because it rains so much, some buildings are constructed so that the walls lean outward slightly. This helps protect the bricks and mortar from rain that falls straight down. There was a monument to Jan Leeghwater, who the Schermer Windmill Museum credited with a number of innovations in windmill design and other architecture. It’s interesting to see the Wikipedia link gives a less flattering description.
I was surprised to learn that the mills shown in the photos above could be moved to a new location in about two months time. The parts are all numbered and, because it is all built from wood, they are light enough to be moved with horses and carts.
We rode past the Beemster dairy factory. This is a much larger operation than the little farmer cheese place we toured a few days back. We had purchased a wheel of Beemster cheese a few years ago via igourmet.com so it was fun to see something we recognized.
We stopped in Edam (which is essentially a suburb of Volendam), another name you might recognize if you’re a cheese fan. This is the cheese weigh house in Edam.
Had we arrived on a cheese market day, we would have seen guys carrying cheese around like this.
Our barge was moored at a marina at a sort of touristy waterfront in Volendam.
On this waterfront was a nightclub which caught fire early on New Years Day 2001. The dark green building in the background was the club, and a monument and plaque are in the foreground.
Some of the exits were blocked, and scores of teenagers and young adults were badly burned, sixteen died. Although Volendam is a fair-sized small city, it seems this area is more like a small town, and it was mostly local youth in the club on New Years Eve. Just walking around in town we spotted a few people with scars likely from the fire fourteen and a half years ago, and the tour guides described what a huge impact it had here.
There is a small building on the waterfront which is a single room containing several chairs called the Praathuis. Literally this means “Speak House”, but the guides translated it as “Liars House”. Apparently the townspeople gather occasionally to gossip, but also it seems that constructive ideas to improve the town form here. Some of the gossipers are influential, and things get done – the local impression is that Volendam is a city that is “ahead of the curve.”
We went through “The Maze”, which is an area just behind the waterfront where houses were constructed with no thought roads or consistent layout, then visited a churchyard cemetery where the sixteen youths were buried.
Afterwards a bunch of the tour and the guides had a drink at the Art Hotel Spaander. The hotel was founded in 1881, and the founder would allow artists to stay in exchange for a painting. With over a thousand original paintings filling almost every wall inside, it feels like a museum.
