North of Amsterdam

On Sharon's second day in England she discovered Primark - 3.5 hours in a shop I have not yet ventured into - pretty impressive. The week was a mixed bag in relation to the weather but it didn't dampen the enthusiastic tourist.  One day she caught the train to and visited Bath (Roman Baths, Abbey, Fashion Museum). After work Harry and I drove over to meet her and went for a swim (not quite hot enough for an outdoor pool in November) and a Thai dinner. On Friday we flew out to Amsterdam. It was one of those trips where we planned to hire a car and go out of the city - so we only saw the capital from the ring road at night. The hotel on the motorway north was probably one of the nicest we have stayed in - large foyers, heaps of rooms and restaurants - another good deal. This is cheese and tulip country. It is a pity it wasn't spring time, but at least the cheese was still about in truck loads. We stopped at Alkmaar where the cheese markets are held every Friday - yes it was Saturday - so we saw an empty square but the local shops still had the local Edam and Gouda (both names of towns close by) plus all the different camemberts, bries, blue cheese, wasabi etc etc. Apparently at the market traders and carriers weigh the cheeses and there are demonstrations on making the local cheeses. It is held outside the medieval weighing house and is surrounded by stalls where cheese and other local items can be bought - if we had been there on a Friday I suspect a few euros would have left our pockets. But we got enough for lunch with some bread which we ate on a park bench looking over the river.  Before leaving the 'cheese topic', we visited in the early hours of darkness Edam - yes where the cheese actually comes from. We had a nice dinner in the local hotel before heading back to the hotel for a not so early night.

Over the weekend we drove along some dykes and across lots of polders - back came my primary school geography lessons and our earlier trip to Amsterdam where we did the same thing but on a bus.  We stopped at Hoorn which was a delightful seaside town.  There we walked around the wharves, through the town city and past markets. Sharon ventured into a couple of shops and we wandered around taking photos of bicycles and buildings. Hoorn was the home of the Dutch East India Company - it appears as though most of the trade was spices from the exotic orient.

Haarlem was a lovely surprise. It is a smallish city with a population of around 150,000 and has the most delightful cathedral in the market square with little boutique shops around it. It was too late to go into the Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk but we wandered down streets and around the cathedral in the twilight.

We also took Sharon to Zaanse Schans - we'd been here before but with a bit more time (last time it was a rushed bus trip where there is never quite enough time to look at everything). The town is a museum -a collection of well-preserved historic windmills and houses - relocated here back in the 1970s. The windmills were built sometime during the 16th century and each has a name such as "The Houseman","The Crowned Poelenburg", "The Cat", "The Young Sheep", "The Ox", "The Seeker", "The Cloverleaf" and the "Motley Crew". We enjoyed watching the clog making demonstration and looking through the working windmill that was used to dye chalks. Our last stop before the airport was Zandvoort - another seaside resort. It was dark and late but we had some fun on the beach before winging our way back to Bristol.