Amsterdam/Belgium/London Day 3 - Tulips to the Horizon

It’s strange for us to not have a car during vacation, but there’s no sense having one in the city.  So Tuesday night when we decide to explore the Dutch countryside, we scramble to rent a car for the next morning.  Fortunately, Sixt has an office just a short walk from our hotel and we’re motoring by 9 AM.  First stop is Zaanse Schans, about 30 minutes and home to some historic working windmills.  If you’ve read our blog before, you know of my predilection to 1960s roadside attractions, and this stop has more promise than a billboard that starts “World’s Largest…”

We pull into town and pass the historical village with the museum and four working windmills.  We pull into the actual historic working village, the place where normal folks live and work.  Like any old town, it’s a layered affair, new built next to old, but this one with a decidedly Holland flair.  The main part of town consists of a tight knot of looping avenues ringed by canals.  This is spring so doors and windows are left open while families bike and walk and communally enjoy.  There are quaint, compact homes of the traditional designs and colors right next door to 70s apartment blocks and modern townhouses as if to map progress through the centuries.  The most striking of these contrasts is the functioning 1800s windmill directly in front of the huge modern factory.  We land in the Wolfsend Café to repair our caffeine deficiency.   My breakfast of local sausage and local honey mustard on farmers bread was wonderful, but we still can’t figure out what was going on with Mandy’s “omelet”.

Walking over the bridge to the main attraction we see the picturesque waterfront of the town, reminiscent of a New England fishing village.  The four big windmills are lined up to create the forced perspective photo we tried to master in Photography 101.  The lovely village is a precise recreation of life in the 1850s, accurate down to the 1€ pay toilets and big museum at one end.  Our first stop is the small windmill, separate from the others.  This one is actively milling spices and selling them in various preparations in the shop.  Next stop is the flour mill, larger then the first with access to the upper floor gearworks and upper deck outside.  The inner workings are pure steampunk fascination, finely engineered wood gears turning each other and operating all sorts of levers and ratchets, ultimately convincing a huge stone wheel to bully grain into flour.

Next stop is the oil mill, this one mashing peanuts into dust and including another wind powered pressure contraption to force the oil out.  It’s the first time we notice how different and purpose built each mill is from each other, evolving out of opportunity when this was a major trading port with sailing ships from Asia.  On the outer deck, we figure out the huge spoked ship’s wheel with the ropes and anchors allows the miller to spin the top of the windmill into the wind to keep the blades at maximum production – another amazing engineering feat centuries before computers were invented.  It’s very windy today and we stand so close to the massive fast-spinning blades that we feel their raw power with each SWOOOOSH.

The saw mill is very different again, starting with the construction video.  This mill was built new from the ground up in 2007 using the ancient techniques.  We go into the works and my carpenter heritage and engineering geek ooze from my pores.  I’m expecting a big spinning blade but instead see a set of precisely spaced vertical blades cutting logs into several same-thickness boards all at once, a ratchet system auto feeding the timber into the blades.  I don’t notice when Mandy strikes up a conversation with a woman who volunteers at the mill, but I’m drawn in when I hear the woman say “my husband built this mill”.  We chat for another minute or two when the millbuilder shows up too.  Both gentile, humble people, proud of their work and heritage, happy to joke with us and show us more details.  It’s one of those moments that you can just feel your day getting better.  The millbuilder’s wife suggests a drive from Alkmaar to Haemskerke to see the fields of tulips and adds a restaurant recommendation for “really goot paankakes”.  We head directly to the car.

The route is everything promised.  Charming villages in between big, sweeping tracts of fertile farm land.  About half the fields are in full bloom, massive canvases painted with broad brush strokes in bright, happy colors.  Mandy is home here in her dream garden.  We stop in lots of fields for pictures, neon pinks, deep reds, shocking purples.  We keep thinking this will be the last stop, but then we see the next field is even more beautiful than the last.  To our surprise, one of the most stunning was the simple white tulip fields.  We meet the lone farmer, patiently working his field, the stuff of museum paintings.  The abundance of pictures below speak for themselves.

We finally reach the next GPS destination, Johanna’s Hof, for a late lunch.  At first glance, we think it’s a tourist trap, a huge restaurant with 200+ indoor seats, the same or more outdoor seats, a playground and a pen full of goats and hens.  Turns out Johanna’s is a local’s hangout, known for its great food and relaxed atmosphere.  We order a pancake dish and, on the waiter’s suggestion a local fish served with Zeekraal, a local delicacy grown in the salt marshes near the beach, a thin delicate succulent which tastes like a tiny, salty asparagus.  Add a few beers and it’s a near perfect Dutch spring afternoon.

Tired, full and getting late, we head to Haarlem, about 15 minutes away.  No sooner do we park then the skies turn dark, the wind kicks mightily, a mini sandstorm preceding the torrential rain.  Decision made we beat feet back to Amsterdam.  The nice folks at Sixt stay open late giving us time to gas up before dropping off our little Renault SUV.  After regrouping at the hotel, we wander to the Luxemburg Café, a typical in/outdoor café on the corner of a busy square.  We sip and munch, watching watch through the glass as people on foot and on bikes hustle to and fro into the rainy Amsterdam night.

(click on the pictures to view full screen)