buzzcolin

Following on my recent Bruges post we will be following our Belgium visit with a couple of days in or around Amsterdam before our cruise. We have been to Amsterdam 3 times and would like to stay just out of the city for a couple of days and was thinking about Volendam. However on reading some more about it, it appears to be full of bus loads of tourists these days. Would Hoorn be a better option, or maybe Harlem? We need to be within half an hour by bus or train from Amsterdam to be able to get in easily on the day of our cruise. PalenQ - I know you will have info on this.

hetismij2

Haarlem would probably be the best choice for you.
Hoorn is 35 minutes by intercity direct, or 45 minutes by sprinter if you change trains.
Haarlem is only 15-20 minutes by rain.

Both a lovely places, and Hoorn is less touristy than Haarlem, and both are far less touristy than Volendam.

PalenQ

Haarlem. I have stayed in Haarlem many times I would not call it touristy but a calm sweet canal-laced regional town - Hoorn maybe is more beautiful - with a nice old port but Haarlem is my choice -though either would be nice.

buzzcolin

Thank you - that gives me food for thought. Will let you know what we decide as I notice you said in one of your posts PalenQ that its nice to get feedback.

PalenQ

always nice to know how others think about places!

hetismij2 and menachem who did not post yet are much more Dutch experts than I as they live in The Netherlands.

Marken-Volendam - conflicted about that but no need discussing here as farther away than you're requisite times to get back to Amsterdam. If you had a whole day I may recommend Marken/Volendam along with Hoorn on same day trip.

Haarlem has a really sweet large town square/marketplace with usual soaring belfry of a great church - open-air market many days.

The city itself is the main attraction -but two individual sights are popular:

http://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/en/

Artist Frans Hal Museum in an old convent

and Corrie Ten Boom House -Haarlem's version of the Anne Frank House: https://www.corrietenboom.com/en/the-museum

And if into it Haarlem is known as Hemp City due to its instrumental role in developing Holland's de factoly legalzied cannabis dealings above the board in Dutch coffeehouses - Willy Winkel near the train station was one of the first anywhere.

http://www.hempcity.net/

Open to all over 18 - need no membership or to be Dutch. Toke in or Take out!

Haarlem also has a splendid pedestrian only shopping area.

buzzcolin

We plan to spend 2 nights in one of these towns so Volendam would be fine as I believe there is a bus from Amsterdam station every 15 minutes that only takes 30 minutes to Volendam. If we stayed there we could also take the boat trip to Marken that seems to run all day. Since my last post I have been on line and had a look at Haarlem and it looks like rather a lovely town. Now I am even more confused. My only reservation with Volendam was that it would be overflowing with tour buses in early June. Maybe the Dutch experts could give me some advice.

hetismij2

You are correct - Volendam will be overrun with tour buses.
Haarlem has more to offer you unless you really want to stay on the Markermeer, in which case choose Hoorn.

PalenQ

Volendam IME is in many ways a nice ordidnay town with a touristed old port area -filled with cafes, waffel shops, restaurants, etc.

Marken is the tiny former Zuider Zee fishing village island now hooked to the mainland by a causeway (and the angling today is for tourists' euros not fish).

Marken, which can be reached directly by bus or better boat from Amsterdam, is basically to me an open-air museum of old=-fashioned Dutch life from the late 1800s era or before- little has changed in terms of old houses -warehouses, etc.

And locals still dress in old-style garb (hokey of course for tourists' benefit)- a really lovely place if not swamped by tour bus groups of course - weekends are the worst I believe.

Yes boats run across the water to Volendam and its old port.

I've been to Marken maybe three times - the best thing I did was to walk on footpaths along the Ijlsmeer coast (formerly the saltwater Zuider Zee until blocked off from the North Sea by the humungous enclcosing dyke and now a fresh-water inland sea) - walked about three miles to Edam -another ancient port - which I enjoyed a lot - especially the old imposing warehouses extent from days when it was a thriving seaport. (Many sources say Edam is also crowded with tourists but the summer day I was there there were few and that was maybe 10 years ago.)

Marken is a museum village - don't think any places to stay -but nice to wander through:

https://www.google.com/search?q=mark...w=1920&bih=950

So I liked Marken as an open-air museum and really enjoyed sitting at the cafe-studded Volendam old port putting down a Heinie or two and watching the mainly Dutch crowd (on a Sunday when locals love to gather in these type places to relax and of course drink!)

Apart from the old seaport Volendam seemed an ordinary pleasant Dutch town:

https://www.google.com/search?q=vole...w=1920&bih=950

(Many pictures here are of Marken but you can see the neat old port in volendam with its many cafes, etc.)

An interesting thing about Marken is that you can easily see the filling in of the Ijlsmeer - reclaiming it from the sea -except for a bit of water left to let Marken remain an island I guess it is now practically part of the mainland.

I think Volendam could be a nice place to stay -do the walk to Edam and take bus back to Volendam - next day hit Hoorn or Haarlem on way back to ship.

hetismij2

Marken is on the Markermeer, not the Ijsselmeer.
It is not being poldered, but they are creating an wetlands area in it now.

PalenQ

I guess the Markermeer is an arm of the Ijsselmeer? Could I not see polders from Marken - I may well have been mistaken - hetismij2 obviously knows as she lives not far away I believe. And yes maps I just looked at show no polders near Marken:

https://www.google.com/search?q=mark...hrome&ie=UTF-8

hetismij2

The Markermeer is separated from the Ijsselmeer by the Enkhuizen-Lelystad Dijk.
The original plan was to impolder it, but that has long since been abandoned, but they are now creating some artificial shallow areas in the lake for birds. It's called the Marker Wad.

I'll be living on the other side of the Ijsselmeer in a few weeks.

buzzcolin

Thanks so much for all your interesting info and advice. Perhaps I should just stick with Volendam as that was my original plan. We could go across to Marken in the morning and walk to Edam in the afternoon (or visa versa) By the time we get back we can explore Volendam without the crowds. Anyway its still a long time away so I will stop now. I have booked a hotel through Booking.com and if we want to change our plans we can do it free of charge at a later date. Time for bed. Good night.

ribeirasacra

no one has suggested Utrecht.
What a shame.
Not so touristy, very quaint historical centre.
by train only 25min away to Ams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnXWEU6mnfg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYoPHnXjgH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDkOj4yMaz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrZeb0xL1Ys
https://www.visit-utrecht.com/

PalenQ

Time for bed. Good night.>

Yup plenty of time to sleep on it!

menachem

Hoorn. Enkhuizen is also good, if you appreciate the Dutch nautical/colonial heritage.

And: don't ever consider staying in Volendam. I've done so, but with my boat in the marina and even then it was a dismal experience. If you want a rural address in Amsterdam, with easy access to Volendam and Marken by bus, look for something along Nieuwendammerdijk in Noord. For instance: you might use the light bus service that does Durgerdam, Zunderdorp, Holysloot, to get off at Holysloot, walk across the fields (there's a beautiful route) to Marken, taking the boat from Marken to Volendam and going back to Noord on the bus from Volendam.

There is no boat to Marken from Amsterdam, PalenQ. Not one that regularly goes there, in any case.

If you want to have a fresh look at Marken, walk out to its lighthouse, "the horse". You'll walk through microscopic hamlets that still manage to have a separate identity even though they're on an island that is already small itself.

>>>I guess the Markermeer is an arm of the Ijsselmeer?

There were plans to reclaim that part of the IJsselmeer as "Markerwaard", and an enclosing dyke was already built: that is the present one from Enkhuizen to Lelystad. From that point onwards, that part of the IJsselmeer became "Markermeer". It was to become the fourth IJsselmeer polder. But, in the late 1970s popular resistance, pushed back against the plans so hard, that they were shelved. Every once in a while, some pundit proclaims that the area should be (partly) reclaimed, but then such voices fall silent again. As hetismij wrote, artificial wetlands are being created to build a better habitat for migratory birds.

PalenQ

There is no boat to Marken from Amsterdam, PalenQ. Not one that regularly goes there, in any case.>

Not anymore then but used to be excursion water trips from the VVV Tourist Office. Too bad - was a nice way to go -the walk from Holysloot to Marken/V sounds sweet.

menachem

Holysloot - Marken is a beautiful walk, all in glorious "dutch light"

buzzcolin

Thank you all once again for your very interesting alternatives. I have lots of food for thought over the next few months. Will report back next year once we have been.

PalenQ

Another food for thought - Zaanse Schanse - the large grouping of windmills (one at least open to visit) and scene of the neat Zaanse museum showcasing old traditional life along the Zaanse (waterway) (as well as a terribly commercial tourist trap store outside selling wooden shoes, tulip bulbs and traditional Dutch kitsch souvenirs) can be easily combined with a train to Hoorne or visit to Haarlem - train to Koog Zaandijk and short walk from there. Kind of industrial surroundings but still cool. One January day folks were ice skating all around!

https://www.dezaanseschans.nl/en/discover/windmills/

https://www.google.com/search?q=zaan...w=1920&bih=950

menachem

artificial commercial tourist trap