Enkhuisen

21^st July

Surfacing at 5.00am we swallow some coffee and toast then walk the mile back to the train station and board a train for Enkhuisen.

Enkhuisen is a charming town on the edge of the Ijsselmeer, Western Europe’s largest freshwater lake.  The train journey takes 90 minutes. We arrive without incident and walk toward the Zuidersee museum.   On the way we look for a coffee shop for a little caffeine and sugar boost. It’s already 9.45 people!

Nothing is open. We finally locate a great place overlooking the river but the kitchen is CLOSED. The waiter takes pity on us and brings us coffee and “a snack” –  In the form of an enormous plate of four slices of bread, ham, cheese and three fried eggs.

Each.

He informs us that this is normal size snack but some of his customers do order a similar “snack” with 10 fried eggs!

The museum is fascinating.  It is a large open-air museum that depicts regional life as it was lived in the 19^th century.

Before the Afsluit dyke closed off the Zuiderzee in 1934, Enkhuisem was an important port known for ship building, a large fishing fleet and for rope making.

The museum has recreated an entire village complete with fishing boats and fishing nets.  Sail making. A Blacksmith and Coopers Shops.  There’s a butchery and a Cheese shop. The farming exhibit shows a typical Dutch farmhouse with living quarters in the front and large dairy in the back of the same building.  There are working windmills.   There is an exhibit of how herring was smoked we buy a whole fish still warm from the smoker.  The taste is warm, salt, smoky and delicious.

After wandering through the exhibit and taking photographs for three hours the crowds are beginning to build. We head back to the Station find a café collapse and sink a beer in record time.

We arrive home at 2.30 pm .The streets of our town are now teeming with Saturday afternoon shoppers, thousands of them. We buy tonight’s dinner at the PLUS market and sleep till early evening.

There is a Spanish Tapas Bar a few doors down. We amble over and spend an hour relaxing with a couple drinks and 2 tapas plates.  Another basket of deep fried question mark – some of the innards are even a mystery to the servers.  Scary.

I’m woken at 3 am by a strident call from the alley.

“Hello, ik ben de policei.”  “Hellooooo,” a drunken giggle, “Hic, Ik ben de policei”  Much unlocking of doors and shushing from the wife fading out into drunken giggles.