Amsterdam

The Airbnb we stayed at near Amsterdam was really fun.  It was out in the countryside of Utrecht and it was on a working farm.  The building looked like an old-school motel and we had three rooms.  Jenn stayed in one of the rooms with the girls, Dave stayed in the other room with two boys, and Jill and I stayed in the third room with the other two boys.  The children all loved seeing the baby lambs in the backyard.  During our first night, the farmer came out with bottles of milk and he let our kids feed them.  They loved that. 

The day we went to Amsterdam, we started a bit outside of town in a "pioneer village" type of place, called Zaanse Schans.  It is a Dutch heritage site that included a museum, chocolate factory, wooden shoe workshop, pewter foundry, as well as a historical village with windmills.

We started in the Zaans Museum.  It told the history of this part of the Netherlands.  During the 1600s and 1700s, this area was the center of industry in the Netherlands.  Hundreds of windmills powered all sorts of factories:  saw mills, cocoa, rice, starch, oil, and more.   It was a really cool place and audioguides helped us all stay interested.

This ship was a replica of a group of sailors who sailed to the North Pole and were attacked by a polar bear.  One of the men that escaped was said to have lived, however he never lost the look of fear in his eyes.  

The boys loved this painting.  It's a depiction of a story that happened in a local town where a bull attacked a man and his pregnant wife.  Both of them died, but as the bull gored the pregnant woman, she was tossed in the air.  The baby fell out and lived!  The villagers killed the bull and mourned the loss of the couple.  The child was baptized and lived for several months before it died of an illness.  Quite a remarkable story. 

The largest exhibit in the museum was a replica of the Verkade Chocolate Factory.  We watched the process of chocolates and cookies being made.

Just like "I Love Lucy," when Lucy worked the assembly line, our boys sorted the chocolates digitally using these monitors.  Chocolates "traveled" down an assembly line and the children sorted them into the "box."  They had so much fun.

Most every day of our trip we took a family Christmas card picture.  We took this picture with the windmills thinking it would be a great Christmas card picture.  Sadly, Landon wasn't very happy and didn't give us his best smile.

After the museum, we walked through the village.  Our first stop was a wooden shoe shop.  Holland is famous for wooden shoes.  Outside of the shop there are some great picture opportunities.

These guys demonstrated how to make a wooden shoe.  It was really fascinating to see how fast they could make them out of a block of wood.

Europeans never fake being polite and sometimes they are just plain rude.  Dave and Tanner wanted lunch at a restaurant next to the one the rest of us ate at.  Our servers wouldn't let them eat at our tables, though, and told them they had to eat at the other tables.  I had to grab a picture of Dave and Tanner eating at their table.  Later, I pulled out my water bottle from my backpack and the server told me, "I'm sorry you can't drink that here."  Unbelievable.  I couldn't even drink!  It wasn't inside the restaurant, and the entire place was conducive for everyone to have a backpack and a water bottle.  It was frustrating.

This entire village smelled like chocolate.  Jill described it as the delicious smell you get when you melt unsweetened chocolate and butter to make brownies.  Everyone loved the constant smell.  Everyone that is except Alyssa.  She did not like it one bit.

The best part of the village was the windmills.  There were six along the water and they were so cool.  We toured this awesome windmill where they sawed wood.  People that worked there were surnamed "sawyer."  It was really neat to see the wood being cut by wind power.

Here is a pretty garden and the small pewter foundry. 

We had a terrific morning and early afternoon in Zaanse Schans.  We left there and drove to Amsterdam to go on a canal cruise.  The place we parked was unlike anything I have navigated before.  I drove into a car elevator!!  Then the elevator took our car down a level where I parked.  I was a bit worried, and I couldn't believe Dave got his Honda Odyssey into the elevator.  He must have had only inches on all sides! 

Our canal cruise wasn't for about an hour so we got a snack at a hot dog stand and the children played at a nearby playground. 

Here is our canal cruise ship.  Our tour lasted 75 minutes and took us all around the central part of the city.  The canals and architecture really make Amsterdam a beautiful city.

Amsterdam has so many bicycles, even more than Rotterdam!  Here is a public bicycle parking place with thousands of bicycles!  All the bicycles look similar.  There aren't cheap or expensive bicycles, they are all average.

It's fun as the children are getting bigger because they can sit together and let moms and dads sit together.

One of the cool places we cruised by was the Anne Frank house.  It was really crowded so we didn't go in, but it was fun to cruise by.  Here are some other cool buildings we were able to cruise by.

We loved this quote and I wanted to remember it.  It's from a philosopher who said, "Like all great travelers I have seen more than I remember and I remember more than I have seen."

After cruising the canals we went back to our motel to rest.  Everyone was still hungry so Dave and I went for a dinner run and picked up some soap at a grocery store (we went through all of our soap) and picked up some food from McDonald's.  We really know how to eat fine cuisine when we travel.