The forecast for today called for rain, so we planned to do something outdoors! What’s next, bicycling in the rain?
Okay, maybe we aren’t as adventuresome as this sounds. Zaanse Schans is a large outdoor venue with molens and other buildings from the area, but it also has a lot of places to duck into while it rains. One of those places is the Zaans Museum, which tells the history of the area. The only photo that I took in the museum was of an old sewing machine. I was amazed to learn that it was used for not only making, but repairing the sacks which were used (and reused) for transporting grains and such. We would throw away a sack that was damaged, but not these Dutch folks – they fixed them!
Zaanse Schans is a very popular tourist area with lots of tour buses and such. We figured that with the rain it would be light on crowds, but no! This may be the busiest we’ve seen, but it is still great fun. Here is Linda inside the cheese shop and some other photos of the area.
And yes, it did rain, but it made the flowers look great!
The only museum that we visited is the Weavers House. This is new since our last visit in 2015. Weaving sailcloth was an industry that was done in homes in this area. This home was moved to the venue from about 7 km away. It had been the home of 2 families who used 5 looms to weave cloth for sailing ship sails. The volunteers claimed me as a new volunteer because of my understanding of weaving.
Our day actually started in the rain, with a visit to the nearby Beemster Cheese factory for their outlet store. The cheese is wonderful, and I love their sense of humor – purple cows!
The end of the day was quite different – the rain stopped and there was sunshine. The sheep were out in the meadow and we rode the bicycles to the nearby grocery store after we discovered that we were out of coffee (gasp!).
No comments:
Post a Comment