Holland at Tulip Time

This is Page 2 of my travelogue of our late-April 2005 trip to Holland. If you somehow missed the first page, click here to go there: Page 1 - Holland at Tulip Time

Day 3

Another early wake-up call because our tour was departing from Hoorn to Edam and Volendam at 8:30 a.m. We started out with another short walking tour of Hoorn.

After our short tour, we walked to where our tour bus was parked and drove to Edam.

Shore excursions were included almost every day, so we were really able to experience the culture of the Netherlands first-hand.

Below are some pictures that I took on the way to Edam, which include our first views of the tulip fields.

The tulips you see in the pictures are cultivated for their bulbs, not their flowers. The flowers are chopped off and left in the fields. Tulips purchased from florists come from hot houses, even in Holland.

The Tulip is not indigenous to the Netherlands. It was discovered in Turkey and brought to Holland in 1593.

There are many more tulip pictures later on in this travelogue.

Edam was our next stop. Founded by farmers in the 12th century, Edam boomed in the 17th as a shipbuilding center. Edam cheese is no longer made here, but it does hold an open air cheese market every Wednesday in July and August.

Only two miles away from Volendam, a major tourist town, Edam is a very quiet and beautiful place to visit.

Situated behind a dike along the shore of the IJsselmeer, Volendam is a very popular tourist attraction. Its main street is made up of shops selling wooden shoes and other souvenirs. A fun thing to do there is to get your picture taken in traditional dress. There are several photo studios on the street that offer this to tourists. Our picture at the end of this travelogue was taken at one of the studios.

Below is a picture of the Volendam's harbor. I took a picture from the very same spot in 1995, when we visited Volendam on a tour from Holland to Switzerland.

While we were touring Hoorn and Edam, our ship sailed to Volendam. This is a picture of the River Empress berthed alongside Volendam's harbor. We walked over to the ship for lunch, then we were off again on another shore excursion.

The afternoon's tour was of Zaanse Schans, a small open-air museum on the banks of the river Zaan.

The highlight of the visit to Zaanse Schans was the opportunity to go inside of this working windmill called Dye Mill De Cat (The Cat) The pictures below are of the windmill's interior on both the first and second floors.

This windmill was and still is used to process mineral dyes for making paint and for dying fabrics. It's probably the last wind-powered dye mill in the world.

Windmills existed in Holland from about 1200. Starting in 1414, windmills began to be used to drain water from fields. In the 1800's there were about 9,000 windmills in Holland.

After buying a pair of wooden shoes in Zaanse Schans, we returned to the ship in Volendam. Above right is a view of Volendam from our cabin.

It was the end of another long day. During dinner, the River Empress departed Volendam and sailed all night to Arnhem.