Marken, Vollendam, Edam

 We stayed at the Madrid Airport on Friday night and caught a 6:00 flight to Amsterdam - WAY too early, can’t remember WHY I did that!! Got the rental car and off we went….

The first village we visited was Marken. It’s a traditional Dutch village and to get there you have to drive out on the road that has water on both sides. It’s a lovely town, but it’s unbelievable how many tourist are there. The town is located right on the water in the main street had many tourist shops, but it was also fun to see all the boats out in the water. We went into the bigger church Noticed that there were many boats hanging from the ceiling. These were to honor the long mirror time, history of the village. It rained often on, but we were able to see the village and enjoy it.The one thing that bothered me was at the town was hanging up flags, and it interfered with photographing. We saw three men hanging the flags and because all the flags look new we guess that there might be a festival coming up, but it really did limit our photos.

The second village was Vollendam which is which is a bit larger. Once again, another traditional Dutch Village and we had to get under awnings often on during the day because of the rain. Fallen dam was having a market in the street and on the way out we bought some cod bites. They were delicious and we even thought they were better than the ones in Portugal because the ones in Portugal are cured in salt for so long. These cut bites were slightly salty, but we both agreed they were better.

Our third village was eaten, and if you’ve heard the name, you are right this is a cheese village.We went into a cheese shop and they were giving out lots of samples, and we fell in love with all of them, but since we couldn’t take all of them with us, we bought a smoked goat cheese. Then on the way home, we stopped at a supermarket and bought bread and prosciutto and some drinks.

Tonight we are staying at Shepherd’s bed-and-breakfast in Lynne and it’s a lovely place to stay.The owner told us that the house was built in 1844 making it 170 years old. She even brought out plates and glasses for us so that we could sit in the dining room and have our dinner.