Open Air Museum

After we finished up at the Windmill museum we headed over towards Enkhuisen to visit the ZuiderZee open air museum. If we had known it was so extensive we may have spent our entire day there because we ran out of time to see it all. They even have an indoor portion that we didn't even get close to.

The open air museum is set up like a couple of villages that depict how life was by the see around 100 years ago. The homes and buildings have been brought there from different places all around. We got to go inside most of the buildings and there were displays and people in period costumes demonstrating things and explaining what there was to see. It was interesting comparing the way of life to what we have learned from other museums like it in Germany and also in the U.S. In Germany, particularly the Black Forest the houses are HUGE while the Dutch houses at this museum were quite small with the people sleeping in little cubby hole cabinets in the walls! Colin had fun learning to play with some of the toys from that time and there was an older gentleman visitory who was glad to show him just how it was done. We all wish that we had had more time to experience the whole museum.