Friday 24th June Amsterdam to Purmerend
We headed back across the ferry into Amsterdam to walk on top of the NEMO Science museum. The high building has steps, seats and wind and solar 
technology on the roof top and also gives you a fantastic view of Amsterdam. A nice café on the wharf served lots of buttery pastries but unfortunately for Roger another crap coffee.
Next stop was Muiderslot Castle. The small town of Muiden not more than 20kms from Amsterdam is such a stark contrast to the bustling city. It still has its small canal town scenes with a great big castle at the end of the point. Although quite pricey at $22.50 NZ dollars each and hard to get to with a motor home we didn’t quite leave enough money in the parking meter to see the whole castle completely which did have a lot to see and offer. In 2 hours we had a self guided tour, a guided tour and a garden visit; unfortunately the falconry demonstration had ended.
Most of the castle has very little contents and just has boards to read; therefore we took the tour at no extra cost. However because Dutch speaking people made up the majority of the group and England had just voted to get out of the EU the tour was conducted in Dutch and the rest of us were given booklets to read. The guide did say we could ask questions, but the booklet was very informative and loved taking the piss out of the Dutch. It had cartoons about Dutch (from 17th century) sitting on their money and being tight with it, sitting up in bed to sleep because they were scared the sense would fall out of their head if they lay flat and a baker talked them into having their heads cut of to get them refreshed.
On a more serious side the history of the castle is interesting as is the moat. Even though Holland is flat and by the sea it didn’t always have flooding issues. Because of invasions from France and Prussia some Dutch guy came up with an idea to protect them by making waterways that were too shallow to boat across but too deep to ride a horse over. Hence the canal system was created with moats etc, what was once a defence mechanism is now a problem, especially with global warming and the effects mass population is having on the levels of the ground. Having to rectify the budget we headed for Edam to sample some real Edam cheese and get in some free camping. Unfortunately the very small canal town of Edam doesn’t actually produce cheese, a neighbouring town sells it but the cheese market had already been and gone earlier this morning.
We ended up in the busy Friday night town of Purmerend in a car park for 7 Euros plus power and with free wifi. I had to get a neighbouring camper to pay our fee with her Maestro card as they don’t accept Mastercard, visa or cash. She did however tell us our parking wasn’t conforming to motor homers’ proper etiquette and we had to re-park. She was excited because she thought we were German by our number plate; we have experienced this before as our camper has no markings to show that it is a rental. Thank heavens Holland is not in the European Cup and here’s hoping when we go to other countries Germany hasn’t pissed anybody off. We do have a NZ flag but the windows are so small it would probably look like an ISIS flag from a distance. As long as they don’t think we are British and anti EU.
| PHOTO GALLERY |
| Previous page |
There's room for everyone
Public bike racks everywhere
Amsterdam Central ahead
Stunning Dutch Architecture
Botel floating hotel
