Amsterdam - Day 3

Today was more relaxed. We got up later and had breakfast in the hotel. A bit about breakfast - the Dutch like sprinkles on their toast! Like chocolate sprinkles! There were tiny little boxes of sprinkles at the buffet. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and fruit. Cute, no?

In front of the windmills

Since we manage to finish everything in town yesterday, today we went to a little recreated 17th Century Dutch village called Zaanse Schans. Almost all of the buildings are original, but they were brought to Zaanse Schans from different places in the area, so they weren't all originally together. Since it was a Monday, not everything was open as it would have been on the weekend. But, as the weather was just sprinkly instead of the deluge of the day before, I'm still glad we waited.

Making a wooden shoe

Em in some giant shoes

The wooden shoe museum/shop were open, which was one of the things I really wanted to see. We were lucky that we came in just after a British tour group, so the wooden shoe making demonstration was in English. It was really neat. There were three different machines that he used to make the shoe. They all worked along the lines of a key machine, where an example is placed in one side, and the machine copies it on the other. First, he  put a block of wet wood on the machine to carve the outside shape. Then he moved it to the machine that carved out the main foot part, and then he moved it to another to carve out the inside of the toe. We got to buy the shoe we saw him make. :) It's not sanded or anything, but it still makes a rockin' cool souvenir.

Grinding the peanuts for oil

Then we went to the cheese shop, where we again tagged along with the British tour group for an English demo. Only 2 of the 5 windmills were open, so we went to the oil mill, where they were making peanut oil. It was pretty neato, because we got to see all of the parts of the mill working. We also got to go out the top and see the village from above. The other cool thing we could really see from there was how much higher the sea level was than the fields on the other side. The mills were all built along the dike.

We then headed over to the museum (which hadn't been open when we first got there) and looked around. Most of it was pretty boring, actually, but the parts about how they would have lived in the village were fun. They had kid-sized outfits, so we made Em dress up.

From Zaanse Schans, we were only half an hour from the North Sea, so we drove over there. It was a bit of an adventure, because I wasn't really sure where to go. There was a green strip on the GPS with one road that went that way. At the end of the road were what looked like paths through the green to the sea, so I figured that was probably the best place. We drove to the end of the road and ended up in what was a small town called Wijk Aan Zee. We parked in what looked to be a beach lot and got out. It reminded me of Oregon. It was cold and windy, and it looked like sand dunes covered in low foliage. It was quite a walk to the actual beach. The beach was lined with empty little beach cabins. It was so cold that I failed to get a picture, so the one on the left is from Google images. I just wanted you to see the little cabins.

We took off our shoes and walked to the sea. It was freezing! Em refused to step in it, but she took a picture of Max & me. It took her forever, because she was taking a video of us yelling at her to hurry up. Brat.

Emma says - I loved the cheese shop! They had lots of free samples. The video of Mom & Dad yelling at me at the North Sea is pretty funny. They didn't know what I was doing! :)At the end of the day it was really fun, but I was glad to get home. (The kitties were happy for us to be home, too)