Windmills and Wooden Shoes

Ok, Ok, a typical title for a blog about the Netherlands….but these also were 2 things that were on Sheryl’s list, to go into a windmill and to sit in a giant wooden shoe!

Zaanes Schans…..a Dutch Barkerville! It is about a 20 minute train ride northwest from Amsterdam Central Station and about a 15 minute walk. It is a little town set up as museum site with about 6 working windmills plus buildings that demonstrate cheese making, a pewter foundry, a cooperage (barrel making), a bakery (yum) and a wooden shoe workshop to name a few. It is free to get into the little town but you have to pay to get into each of the Windmills separately….we went into one that made paint (artist kind of paint)

Then wandered through to town to the wooden shoe workshop where we found…you guessed it….the giant wooden shoes to sit in!  The fellow who was doing the demonstration had a shoe made in about five minutes....very impressive.

they were on the ceiling too!

Just as we were entering this building, about 40 children and their teachers arrived….all under the age of 10 by the look of it….from Chengdu China….where I was just a few months ago. Brave teachers.

It was a hot day so we left by about 3 to head back into town for our next “experience”

The tour was crowded with people (mainly young)…you are shown how they brew the beer…..you see the big copper vats, the horses that pulled the carts of beers (I thought only the An Hauser Busch brewery did that but I guess not) then we became the beer and we felt what it was like to be brewed and bottled! And of course a little tasting and a lesson on how to appreciate beer….you could become a d.j., get your name on a bottle of beer, design your own t-shirt….send an epost card (Sheryl and I did that but I don’t think it will link I will try but it’s only there for 2 months).

I headed back to the hotel the short route (I needed to put my feet up for a while)and Sheryl and Paul took the longer way back. One of the staff at the hotel recommended a really good restaurant with Dutch food…..very very yummy. We chatted to a young couple from Sydney Australia on a three month tour…New York and now several places in Europe. Then when they left a couple of girls sat down and  asked where we were from…they were from Calgary, nurses now working in Saudi Arabia for the last few years, on a few days holiday….of which they seem to have quite a few, making it possible to see so much of Europe and the Middle East.

We left the restaurant in search of ice cream…down the narrow streets by so many restaurants…Dutch, Greek, Argentinian, Brazilian, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Thai…..I’m sure I missed some. We found a Ben and Jerry’s about a block away.

Have they gone on holidays.....

or do they just forget where they put their bikes!!

Hamburgers in a vending machine!

Then slowly made our way back to the hotel for our nightly wine.