Zaanse Schans, Volendam, Marken, Delft, Den Haag, and Madurodam

As we approach the final days of our tour, I guess we're getting a little lazy. Before Amsterdam, we hadn't participated in any organized tours, and so far we have participated in three. A canal tour, and candlelight wine and cheese, and finally, yesterday a 9.5 hour bus tour of the North and South of Holland. It was surprisingly a very pleasant day despite the slow pace of the large group. We first visited Zaanse Schans, a 17th century village with several working windmills which were used in their day to pump water, to grind seeds for flour and oil, and for sawing lumber. We also visited a cheeze maker shop and sampled several types of cheese. Then it was off to visit a wooden shoemaker on the island of Marken to which we gained access via a pedestrian ferry boat from the pretty town of Volendam which was completely swamped with tourists. Marken was originally a salt sea fishing village, but since the construction of a 20km dyke cutting the South Sea from the North Sea (see below), the south sea became a large lake and fishing activity virtuallyu died with the exception of smoking fish which is still done in Marken...in fact, the shoemaker told us that the fish smoking plants use the chips of poplar which fall to the floor of the shomaker's shop. Then we were off to Delft to visit the famous Delf Blue ceramic shop where they produce very expensive pottery (they warned against fake Delft Blue and told us how to distinguish the real thing).
Our final destination for the day was Madurodam which is a miniature city of Holland's most famous buildings in a scale of 1:25. It was a donation by Mr. Maduro in memory of his son who he lost during the second world war. t is truly a remarkable achievement for detail. If you look through the upper window of the Rijkmuseum model you actually see a replica of Rembrandt's largest canvas which we had seen in the real Rijkmuseum only a few days ago. Once again, I took some notes of our guide's anecdotes and gleaned the following:
- the name Nederlands (lower lands) describes the land which is lower than the sea
- 88 beautiful canals...try saying that in Dutch (it's a real tongue twister)
- Holland had over 10000 windmills in the 1600's used to pump water out of the lakes to make new land (Polder)...the windmills were, of course, also used for producing flour, oil and sawn lumber.
- after the catastrophic flood of 1916, a 20km dyke was built to close the connection between the South Sea and the North Sea. The South Sea is now a large fresh water lake which us fed from Switzerland via the Rhine.
- schiphol (the airport) got its name from the boats (schiph) which were discovered at the bottom of the lake which was pumped out in 1864.
- Den Haag: 750 years old...mid-13th century. Capital of Nederlands. Working offices of Queen Beatrice and the international court house.