Day 15 - The day we stumbled into a carnival
Today we woke up early for breakfast at 8 AM. We wanted to get out on the road as early as possible to maximize our time in Alkmaar. We ate breakfast at the hotel and hopped on the bikes.
At Enkhuizen, pronounced like "Ehnk-house-zen," there is another dike like the one we rode over the day before yesterday,and it's almost just as big. This dike runs from Enkhuizen in North Holland to Lelystad in Flevoland. The dike splits the large body of water created by the closing dike (Afsliutdijk) into two lakes (Dutch: pl. Meren, sing. Meer). The upper lake is the Ijsselmeer and the bottom lake is the Markermeer.
Today, we biked South and West along the beautiful coast of the Markermeer. Over our left shoulders was the shimmering lake, bustling with sailboat traffic. Other cyclists and runners were out on the trails this morning, and there were lots of "Goede Morgen!" In Dutch, the "G" is fricative. So "Goede Morgen" contains no hard "G " sounds it's more like "ch-oo-dah moor-cheh" with a fricative "ch" like in German "Ich"). It's really hard to guide English speakers to pronounce this phoneme, as it's non-native to the language, despite the Germanic roots of the language. Imagine you're coughing up some phlegm or saying "Channukah" in Hebrew. (Jessi here: with my wacky hearing it took me several days to catch onto the sound, but now I've got it and can greet the Dutch in their native tongue! I've also got, "Thank you" and "Good Day" for later in the afternoon on the bike trail!)
In about an hour we were in Hoorn already! We found a cafe in the town square and had a coffee. One particularly lovely thing about this country: it is considered terribly uncivilized to serve a cup of coffee without a cookie to go with it. Seriously, order a coffee anywhere in the Netherlands and nothing else. You're going to get a cookie with it. Make peace with this delicious fact and enjoy it. Anything less would be barbaric! We love this country!
In the Town Square of Hoorn, sits a statue dedicated to Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who was an officer for the famous Dutch East India company, and a native of Hoorn. Before the Ijsselmeer and the Markermeer were formed, Hoorn was a seaport town. It's been around since the year 800 and it experienced its peak during the Dutch golden age (17th century) as a port for shipping and trading. The aforementioned Jan Pieterszoon Coen was known as a merciless ship captiain, who sailed to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and brought back spices, cloves, etc. He is also famous for making a "little town" the capital of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia. He called it Batavia. Today, that "little town" is called Jakarta! He was known as rather ruthless to his would-be enemies. There is a part of a quote from the man on the front of his statue. The quote is "Dispariert niet" which means "Don't ever dispair." The full quote is: "Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us."
The seal of Hoorn, is also a curious thing. It features a red unicorn with a yellow horn holding a banner, which displays a horn held with a blue string. So many horn references! I'm not sure how I meant that...
Jessi here: After we left Hoorn, it was a very short ride into Alkmaar! As we rode, I kept seeing posters for a fair for a period of two weeks and was wondering.... Are we going to get to see a Dutch fair? As the countryside rolled by, we saw no fewer than four windmills (In Mauro we trust - more on this in a later post!) and stopped for photos. At the last windmill stop, I spied a very large tower in the distance and thought ... "That looks suspiciously like a carnival ride. But maybe it's just a local attraction in Alkmaar." And so we continued biking. About 20 minutes later, we pulled into the city center of Alkmaar, 200 meters or so from our hotel, and actually had to dismount our bikes. There was a carnival right in front of us! Games! Rides! Concessions! It is the Alkmaar city fair! We walked our bikes over to the hotel where they kindly agreed to stow them for us until our check-in time.
The carnival is really neat! They have taken over blocks and blocks of this 700 year old city. Because the city streets are really narrow, the rides and games take up one side, leaving the attendees to throng through the other side. A historic church (Grote Sint Laurenskerk) is currently surrounded on three sides by modern carnival rides. I found it kind of hilarious. The carnival has a pretty large sized mini roller coaster (a mouse ride), a giant swing ride (what I was seeing from the windmill), an observation deck ride (with a bar at the bottom, so you can take your adult beverage on the ride with you), and many "thrill" rides. There is a pretty scary looking haunted attraction, too! The only downside to all of this is that the carnival runs until 1 a.m. and the "racing camels" games is right below our hotel window with the song "Bonanza" on repeat.... YIKES!
Speaking of the hotel - We stayed in the "Grant Hotel" of Alkmaar to celebrate the second to last day of our honeymoon. It's AWESOME! We got this fantastic loft-like room with two awesome views of the city. One of the nicer places we have stayed on this journey!
We did go into St. Laurentskerk and look around. There is a beautiful painting on the ceiling of the final judgement and end of the world. The floor is covered with tomb vaults from the 1600's. The epitaphs are written in old Dutch with Latin influences ("V" as "U" and "IO" instead of "J"). My parents raised me to be respectful of the dead and taught me not to walk on graves. Basically you can't NOT do that here. You have to walk over centuries old graves in order to go anywhere in the churches. Speaking of churches...they are all disused for religion....well most of them. The Dutch have really little use for that sort of thing (SO AWESOME) so they've turned all their churches into community centers, bars, and restaurants. The Catholic and Protestant churches were all basically run out of the Netherlands, by a people who valued education over religion. In their wake, they left the ancient husks of their presence in every town. The Dutch hire folks to curate the historical parts of the churches, and carillon/bell players to keep the bell towers and bells playable and in good condition. Otherwise, it's totally acceptable to walk into a church and have a beer or a coffee while walking all over the dead people of ages past and gazing on the history of the building. These are an enlightened people.
