Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Tourist Information
Alkmaar's TI, in the old Weigh House, sells a €2 town walking
tour brochure (April-Sept Mon-Thu 10:00-17:30, Fri 9:00-17:30,
Sat 9:30-17:00, closed Sun; Oct-March Mon-Fri 10:00-17:30,
Sat 9:30-17:00, closed Sun; Waagplein 2, tel. 072/511-4284,
www.vvvalkmaar.nl).
Arrival in Alkmaar
From the train station, it's a 15-minute walk to the town center.
The route is well-marked (just follow signs for
Centrum
): Exit the
station to the right, then turn left (onto Scharlo) when the street
dead-ends. Soon you'll cross a canal and see the big church (Grote
Kerk), with the Stedelijk Museum nearby. From the church, walk
straight up the main pedestrian street (Langestraat). When you
reach the next canal, turn left and walk one more block to the
main square and TI.
SIGhTS
ss
Cheese Market (Kaasmarkt)
—Tellingly, Alkmaar's biggest
building isn't the church or the town hall, but the richly decorated
Weigh House
(Waaggebouw), used since
the 16th century for weighing cheese. (It
was converted from an old chapel.) The right
to weigh, sell, and tax cheese is what put
Alkmaar on the map in the Middle Ages,
and it's still what the town is celebrated for
today.
Think about the udder importance of
cheese to this culture—wheying the fact that
it has long kept the Dutch economy moo-
ving. If you travel through the Dutch coun-
tryside, you'll pass endless fields filled with
cows, which are more reliable than crops in
this marshy landscape. Because cheese offers similar nutritional
value to milk, but lasts much longer without refrigeration, it was
a staple on long sea voyages—and Holland was the first country
to export it. Today the Netherlands remains the world's biggest
cheese exporter.
There's no better time to sample a sliver of this proud wedge
of Dutch culture than during Alkmaar's
cheese market,
which
takes place on Fridays in the summer (early April-early Sept,
10:00-12:30). Early in the morning, cheesemakers line up their
giant orange wheels in neat rows on the square. Prospective buyers
(mostly wholesalers) examine and sample the cheeses and make
their selections. Then the cheese is sold off with much fanfare, as
