Today Marion and I went for the celebration of the Queen’s birthday to the city of Alkmaar. I never have been before to Alkmaar (apart from a changing trains at the rail road station). Lots of people told me that Alkmaar was a very nice city and now I know they were right.
We did leave for Alkmaar some where right after noon. So yes, we did miss a part of the free market. But is was yesterday way too late that we went to bed to get real early out now.
The weather was beautiful. The sun was shinning very brightly and the temperature was very nice. I hope the weather will stay like this, because I am free from work the rest of the week.
Of course I took my new camera with me. It was the first time that I made real pictures with it. And I must admit that I really love this camera. And yes, the is still a lot I have to learn about this camera, but the most important I think I already have discovered as you just need them to make a picture at all. There is one thing I found out very quickly: I need to buy some bigger memories cards. With my old D40 I could store over 400 pictures on a 4 Gb memory card. My new D300s can only store 150 photo’s on such a card.
Anyway, back to our visit to the city of Alkmaar for Queen’s day. Marion and I made a long walk around the free market of Alkmaar. With the nice weather it was very enjoyable. It is nice to see how people try to sell their (old) things. And to be honest, 95% of it all is rubbish. But when you look carefully you can find some nice things here and there. Just as this person how had this pile of Suske & Wiske albums for sale. Poor Marion, but I went through all of them (so handy to have my book collection on my iPhone) and I managed to find two editions that I didn’t have yet.
Around the city there were all kind of performances. There were musicians, dancers and all kind of other artists.
When we wandered around Alkmaar we both noticed that Alkmaar is indeed a very nice place with lots of historical buildings. Alkmaar must really have a rich history and not only concerning the well-known cheese market. We decided to come back any time soon to have a closer look around. Maybe visit a museum or something like that. It was now way too busy to have a quiet look at things.
At the end of our visit to Alkmaar we ended up at a café called “De Bonte Bengel”. I really liked it there. The food was good, the people friendly and the prices acceptable. Again a place to visit again when it will be a little more quiet.
As said, Alkmaar is a place to return to…