When we first showed you Muiderslot, this castle to the east of Amsterdam, we didn’t bother introducing it. If you’re open to a bit of geeky text on Dutch water-management, read on. Otherwise, just enjoy the photos taken when I biked out and back (a lovely full day only possible this time of year when the days are long enough) both to the see it and to re-stock for this series with images taken in places that can legitimately lay some claim to being at least royalty-related. 🙂

The two photos above right and left show you the narrow channel by which the Vecht River enters what is now the Markenmeer, which is now an almost-entirely freshwater lake. But if you click or tap to open and enlarge the map in the middle, from a display in the castle, you’ll see that until 90 years ago, both the Markenmeer and Ijsselmeer to its north used to be the Zuider Zee which was an open bay off the North Sea, with open flow of water both fresh and salty in and out. First, the Dutch built the Afsluitdijk (which I’d assume is the biggest of the many dikes the Dutch have built over the years – but haven’t yet confirmed) at the far north end, mostly for flood protection though it now also provides a direct road connection between North Holland and Frisia or Friesland. Then, in the 1970s, they did yet another dike that separated that larger former-bay-now-lake into two lakes, Ijsselmeer and Markenmeer and also connected parts of North Holland more easily with the newly-drained polders that are now in the province of Flevoland, without having to go through or around Amsterdam over land.

Both are now almost entirely fresh water reservoirs and flood-control areas that are huge enough to be significant ecosystems and watery playgrounds in their own right. When I first moved here nearly three years ago, I rapidly concluded, as to Amsterdam’s street grid and public engineering, that “it’s all about the water.” The longer I live here, the longer I realize just how right I was, and that it’s ain’t just the capital city but the whole country that’s all about the water. Links above will tell you more, but if you just search for Ijsselmeer on google maps, you’ll see confirmation in their one-sentence summary.