shut your mouth

We journeyed to Muiden on Sunday, glorious weather, quite the surprise. We'd expected it to turn colder but the contary occurred and a heatwave broiled instead. Muiden is a "mouth' or estuary on the Ijsselmeer, the bay of Holland which has been converted to a large freshwater lake. The daytrip is frequently completed. It is an idyllic place, farms, a castle, a fort, a harbour and seaviews of a sea that once was. The town of Muiden and it's sister town of Muidenberg is populated on Sunday's by people sitting on packed terraces, eating apple pie and soaking up the sun as if it will never shine again.

The farmer families who live in Muiden go shopping in Amsterdam on a Sunday (unless they're "Reformed") standing out in burly bodies and healthy skins amongst the less healthy looking wad of tourists most of whom have partaken a little too much and paled as a result.

The urbanites of Amsterdam find this all rather annoying, so instead of sitting on their favorite terrace on the Rembrandt Plein they ride their €1000 touring bikes to Muiden and sit amongst packed terrace's watching each other looking indifferent and eating apple pie. We go walking and do our best to avoid the vulgarity of the Dutch bourgeois.