Fri April 18, 2025
Hi Gang! We’re in Amsterdam for our second day and we’ve been good and not gone to any “coffee houses” if you know what I mean! Lol. We were off the ship early again today and did a 5 hour tour called “Windmills and Edam”.
We started with a 30 minute drive to the authentic old village of Zaanse Schans. It’s a quaint Dutch windmill village that’s been recreated to resemble an 18th century Zaan community. There were once 600 windmills there but now only a few. In essence it’s an open air museum. We saw craftsman making clogs (wooden shoes) and other trades from years gone by. Did you know that in the old days, they had to manually make each pair of wooden shoes and they could only make two pair in one day. Now with machines they can make 200 per day! Gotta love technology!
We then went to Edam, the Dutch village known for the scarlet-skinned Edam cheese. We took a guided tour thru the cobbled stone streets, saw the unique bell tower, the many canals as well as the drawbridge that connects the town to the city. We also visited a cheese factory and got to taste the yummy cheese. Interesting factoid we learned. These old Dutch towns used to all have gates to let you across the bridges into the town that were called ports. And to get in you had to show a pass allowing you to go there which is where the term “passport”came from! Cool, right?
We got back to the ship and had a late lunch and by then the sun came out so we relaxed by the pool. Since we had both been to Amsterdam many times we enjoyed seeing the country side today and definitely the tulips yesterday. I’ll do another update after dinner tonight. TGIF to all!
The Wandering Italian 