Tuesday June 25 – Ijmuiden

This morning we arrived in the Netherlands and we spent our day in the quaint town of Edam and also in Zaanse Schans.  Zaanse Schans is an historic town that has deliberately not changed since the seventeenth century when the Dutch used windmills to create power for their industrial pursuits, such as paint making.  The power of the wind is harnessed by the windmill to grind a variety of natural dyes and pigments.  Some of these dyes are used to colour wool and some to make paints.  Maybe Rembrandt and Vermeer used some of these paints in their art work.  As we walked the cobble stone streets in this open air museum, we also saw craftsmen practising their historic trades.  We spent some time watching one man make clogs.  Once they were completely made by hand but now they are made by a machine in a similar fashion to the way we cut a key.  A clog can be made this way in five minutes from poplar and then put out to dry for three weeks. We also sampled some produce from the bakery and the cheese farm.  The houses that are 400 years old are really quaint and have been well preserved.

As we drove to Zaanse Schans, we saw hundreds of school children going to school, all on bikes.  They have special bike paths and do not have to wear helmets.  We were told that they have very few accidents.

We explored Edam, the home of the red-wax-covered cheese.  It is a charming city of canals and flower gardens.  In Edam, we saw some houses that were definitely slanting at an odd angle.  Our guide told us that some of these houses were the result of shoddy workmanship but that some of them were deliberately built that way because there were no drain pipes when they were built and if the house was at an angle, rain water could drain off.

80% of the Netherlands is reclaimed land.  What they have done with too much water is amazing.  Maybe they need some Dutch people in the Middle East to come up with a solution for their lack of water. 

Ijmuiden is a fishing port, which was completely bombed by the Nazis during the second world war.