A few days at Purmerend

I cannot for the life of me remember what we did on Sunday, so it can't have been important.  Most likely we stayed at home for a rest day again.  We must have cleaned the house, because we knew we wouldn't have much time after we'd cone back from our next few days away.  I do remember I was very tired still, so it may have been a quiet day altogether.

Monday, August 10, 2015

On Monday we packed and left for Purmerend which is only half an hour from where we are staying here in Vreeland.  It was lovely to catch up again with Moenie and Paula, although I had seen them in February when they stayed with me and we did our trip to Cairns together.

As Paula had a doctor's appointment Moenie wanted to come with us to show us around at the Zaanse Schans, a tourist area with lots of (working) windmills of all kinds and houses, typical of the Zaan.

One of the windmills grinds spices, another one grinds stone for pigment in paints and another one is a saw mill.

We spent most of the afternoon walking around, admiring all we saw and enjoying the sunny, warm weather.  We had a cup of coffee and visited some souvenir shops.  We even found some wares that we liked! ;-)

We'd also wanted to have a look at a cache close by, but it got late in the end and it would not have been easy to get to as we couldn't park the car.

making cheese

grinding cloves

Verkade (biscuits) originated in Zaandam

Albert Heijn's first shop (groceries and supermarket chain) in Zaandam

spekulaas (spiced almond biscuits) moulds

At night Paula introduced me to a new Trivia game on the tablet, so we enjoyed ourselves matching our knowledge!