Trip 47

September 2, 2024

We were in Amsterdam this past April for Keukenhof and while here, visited Zaansee Schans, which was very pretty, and for the time of year, not particularly crowded. We had intended to visit Marken and or Volendam, but knew we’d be returning later this year.

There are some videos on YouTube that talk about both Marken and Volendam – how to get there etc. This one highlights what we found, which is that Volendam (which we visited second) is really touristy, especially around the harbor. Given that, we visited Marken first and later took the boat back across.

Today we took the GVB (Metro) to from Amsterdam Centraal Station to the Noord station and then a bus to Marken. The bus took about 30 minutes through a predictably very flat countryside with grazing cattle and horses, some crops and wind turbines . I imagine that all of the land we saw along the way was reclaimed from the sea. Marken was an island only accessible by boat, until 1959 when the causeway that we took to connect the island to the mainland, was built. It doesn’t have many residents (definitely more tourists) and some of the cottages look like they might be seasonal.

Marken is a small (~1700 inhabitants ) village.

The harbor (haven) is where we spent most of our time, having a beer at an restaurant on the harbor (it’s pretty warm for this time of year- my excuse anyway)

We walked out to the edge of the dike facing the Markermeer (a shallow lake once part of the Zuiderzee), and there are small strips of sand some people are clinging to as a beach. From here, you can gaze across the lake to Volendam, a much larger city to which we’ll take a ferry.

The village is scenic, but unlike Zaanse Schans, aside from the harbor, there’s not a lot else to see (no windmills, if that’s what you’re looking for ).

We bought tickets for the 2:15pm 30 minute trip across the lake (12.5€ each) to Volendam; a few people rode up with their bicycles (slightly higher fare). The ferry comes into the harbor where all the sailboats are moored and made a three point turn to position it to head back out once incoming passengers disembarked and departing passengers embarked. It’s two decks, with the lower deck covered and the upper deck partly covered. It’s a beautiful sunny and warm day, so I spent part of the trip out on the deck taking photos, but the covered section up top was still warm.

Volendam was as we expected and the harbor was very busy with a lot of restaurants and souvenir shops and their patrons, but we moved along to find the bus back to Noord. I can’t see the need (or reason) to spend a half day here. It was a good walk back to the bus stop, but gave us a better appreciation for really how much larger Volendam was (I did not expect it to be so large). About a 10 minute wait to catch bus #110 back to Noord, buying our tickets on board.