Day 4 – last full day in Zaandam

On one of our previous visits to Noord Holland, we went to Marken, a small island in the IJsselmeer. So we decided to go and see what has changed and how much we could remember. (It doesn’t help that I’m envisaging Reichenau in the Bodensee as I type this.) Cyclemeter captured our bus journeys there and back again, walking around the island, and then my evening peregrinations back in Zaandam.

Our first stop was at the museum of historic Marken clothing. I can’t believe how much work went into clothing, and the social pressure to have amazing embroidery on everything, even children likely to get it manky almost immediately.

We then walked to a norther headland on very dodgy paths, and then to the far east of the island, getting near to a working lighthouse, and then staggered on – fortunately now on tarmac back to the bus stop. In all we walked about 5km around the island, all the while wondering how anyone road on the brick paths.

Not long after we arrived in Marken, my lighter died. I cannot express how downhearted I was that nowhere on Marken sold smokables, so most of my trudging was ‘power on to the next person to see if they might give me a light’.

Back in Zaandam, I stormed up to the station to find a Tabak. Just outside the station I met two women who were smoking, and very generous with their stash of lighters. I think they were a bit out of it, not that I minded at all. Later that evening, as I wandered through the raindrops to top up my nicotine levels again, I met the same two women, chatting with a couple of lads in Russian. I had asked them during this encounter if they needed a room for the night – they had said they were homeless, but they said they were sorted, in fact staying in our hotel, but later still I saw them sheltering in a shop doorway.

Day 5: Zaandam to Amsterdam to Düsseldorf

Hooray – I should be able to at least vaguely converse in the local language! Very welcome because I didn’t get to sleep until after 5 am, and my alarm went off at 8. We staggered to Zaandam station, took one of the very many trains to Amsterdam, had lack of fun with the ÖBB app, and eventually got onto our train to Düsseldorf. Cyclemeter doesn’t agree that the train went via Utrecht, Arnhem and Duisburg.

After getting set up in our hotel, and me reassuring someone outside it that a local pigeon hadn’t shat in her hair, we went by tram to the Stadtmuseum. It’s in the part of Düsseldorf that houses the Nordrhein-Westfalen government, and is well worth a visit if you want to understand how the city developed. So here are lots of photos, roughly in the order the history was described, along with some randomness, and here’s cyclemeter’s recording of our dribbling around Düsseldorf. (Ignore the time – I only just remembered to stop it.)