2025-08-17 The Netherlands and Paris: Aug 30 (Saturday) – Bunschoten-Spakenburg

Our plan for our stay in Amsterdam is to use it as a base and take a number of day trips to surrounding towns and cities. Our first trip is to the town of Bunschoten-Spakenburg. After a fair amount of poking on the internet and a consultation with the hotel concierge we headed over to the train station and caught the train to Baarn.

Thankfully the concierge explained the train and bus system so we knew what was going on. We scanned our credit cards to get through the gates at the station and then scan again when we get off at our stop. Same with the buses. Very easy. You just have to remember to scan in the places that don’t have turnstiles. Those just have a post with a place you scan. So it easy to forget.

The train station was very quaint.

And nearby was a massive parking lot for bicycles.

The bus stop was easy to find and eventually this little van showed up. Cute “bus”.

The short bus ride took us to Bunschoten-Spakenburg, our destination for the day. This is Saturday morning and their local market was in full swing. We gad red that the ladies in this town often dress in the local costume, especially on market days. We only saw a couple.

There was lots of meats..

and cheeses (we are, after all, in The Netherlands),

fish (often dried),

sweets,

baked goods,

breads,

flowers,

and various and sundry other items for sale.

Mary had read about an almond cookie that was a specialty of the area, so we asked at one of the bakery stands. Turns out it wasn’t “almond season” and they didn’t have the cookies. But they did have another type of almond cookie, so we bought one and split it. Very tasty.

The market was at one end of the harbor, so we strolled over there. This was where they would pull the boats up for repairs.

The harbor was long and narrow...

and was lined with boats along most of the lengths.

We ended up walking most of the length of the harbor.

Many of the boats were the local special boat called botter boats. One of the locals stopped to chat and said that the town had sent about 14 botter boats up to Amsterdam for the Sail Festival.

There were plans for a concert that evening…the BotterPop concert (for the botter boats). The venue faced over the harbor and we decided it was unlikely we could manage goods seats so opted to miss the concert. We did head back to the market and found a nice sidewalk café and ordered some lunch.

Some photos from walking around town.