Marken & Volendam

Saturday, April 10th, we did a little day outing right here in Holland. The main purpose for this outing was to get pictures of the girls taken in traditional Dutch clothes. So, we first went to Marken, which we had never been there before. It's a little Dutch village, just like Volendam, that promises you'll see the locals wearing traditional dress. Well, we did see one lady in traditional dress, but she was leading a tour group! :) We had lunch at a little cafe along the waterfront and enjoyed walking through the village of Marken. In Marken I had my first uitsmijter. Pretty pathetic it took me this long to try something so yummy. I requested an English menu, Andy ordered from the Dutch menu, and after the waiter took our orders we realized we had ordered the same thing. I guess Andy has uitsmijter quite often for lunch at the cafeteria. Anyhow, I'm now a fan!

Here's our pictures in Marken:

I took this picture of Audrey and then did a 180 and took the next picture of Andy and Rachel:

Rachel insisted I take a picture of this particular yard since it had a "mini" house:

We could have taken a ferry to Volendam, but we decided to save ourselves the ferry fare and just drive. It gave Audrey the opportunity to take a 20-minute snoozer... In Volendam our first stop was one of the many photo studios.

Audrey wondering what the lady's putting on her head:

You can have this back: Rachel all dolled up and ready for her photo shoot:The final result:

While we were waiting for the pictures to be printed I purchases some Dutch souvenirs to take home. We really haven't bought much here, thinking we'd always have plenty of time. While, now the time has come to start buying. Andy took the girls outside to get the wiggles out and I shopped away.

Here are the pictures Andy took of the girls outside:

After the pictures were completed we walked around Volendam a bit. We ran into an outdoor market that we browsed through. Once we got our fill, we headed back to the car. I couldn't resist taking a picture of all the houses along the street as we walked back to the car:

There are definitely a lot of things we are going to miss about Holland. I'm going to definitely miss the quaint, little villages. Marken and Volendam turned out to be a fun Saturday outing.