Circumnavigating Gooimeer

The title sounds vaguely like one of those precious new teen movies...Ahem...

The Gooimeer is a small sea--I suppose we should say "lake" now that the Markerwaarddijk has rendered all this water fresh--bordered on the south by het Gooi (which you know by now are the highlands--and I apply the term loosely--around Naarden, Bussum, and Hilversum), on the west by the Hollandse Brug (a bridge linking Muiden and Flevoland), on the north by Flevoland, and on the east by the Stichtse Brug (a bridge linking Huizen and Flevoland). It's not so much that bridges by themselves constitute a natural boundary for lakes, but remember that we are talking about one section of the narrow, remaining waterway separating new Flevoland from historical Netherlands. The narrower places in this long boundary waterway are both natural places to put bridges and natural places to separate lakes by name. So: Gooimeer.

The point is: Saturday morning I cycled all the way around the Gooimeer.

There's only one town on the Gooimeer's north shore, on the Flevoland side: Almere Haven. The real city, Almere Stad, is several kilometers inland. Here the Dutch excavated a harbor from the mud and fabricated around it what looks like an instant luxury town. It reminds me of an American luxury tourist hotel built to remind you of a European village. "OK, let's all be luxurious now. Let's see, we'll need a harbor, and some Indonesian restaurants, and when you've put in the last paving stone you'll almost feel like you are somewhere."
 

I don't know. If it's so easy to cookie-cutter the Good Life, I somehow start to lose track of the point.

Gooimeer at dawn. Again with the resemblance to Florida. Except that the water is cleaner, and the people, too.
 

For this picture I walked my bicycle through weeds all the way to the end of Almere Haven's pier. Honk if you appreciate the effort. The tower far across the water is Naarden's church steeple, which the GPS says is only 2370 meters from my apartment.
 

And this is taken from high atop the Stichtse Brug, looking west along Flevoland's manufactured, geometrically perfect south shore on the Gooimeer. The tower at far left is in Almere Haven. This bridge is the highest above sea level I have been since I landed at Schiphol airport three months ago.
 

Speaking of airplanes...I'm flying to America next Sunday. Is THIS going to feel weird!--A whole new chapter in cultural disorientation--in reverse this time--for your voyeuristic titillation.