This is actually two separate tours. Our first tour is out to Volendam, Marken, and the Windmills of Zaanse Schans. On the bus trip to each city there is informational audio along the way to each destination.
At our first stop, Volendam; we walked through a cute little town.
Arrived at a cheese shop where a lady demonstrated how cheese is made. We get to taste lots of different kinds of cheeses, but mostly Gouda.
Next we walk farther down through town and to the waterfront.
Into the basement of a Waffle Shop we went. There was an excellent demonstration by a man baker showing us how they make the Dutch Waffles. He also showed us how you eat a Dutch Waffle. You place it horizontally across the top of the coffee or tea cup. The steam from the coffee warms the honey or caramel and the waffle. Don't do this with the chocolate ones because the chocolate drips out.
We shop and get pictures along the waterfront.
Using her Karen-Radar, she finds a Swarovski shop. Later, we realized that this time on our own was our only chance for lunch.
Next we board a ferry to Marken and arrive within 30 minutes.
Here we have an excellent demo showing us how they make wooden shoes, both by hand, which they used to do and by machines, which is how they do it now. He started with a block of wood and put it in the first machine and made the outside of the shoe. There is a shoe in the machine and it uses it as the template. That makes the right shoe. To get the left shoe, you put the wood on the other spindle and it makes a mirror image of your template. He placed it in the second machine and this carved out the inside of the shoe. With these two machines they can now make one pair of shoes in five minutes. The shop has wooden shoes hanging from the ceiling and they leave them there to dry for 5 weeks before painting.
They made a huge dike across the North Sea that has stopped a huge area of the Netherlands from flooding, but this blocks out the fish and this used to be a fishing town. Now their business is tourism.
On to the Windmills. All I can say is, NOT ENOUGH TIME.
We saw the oil producing windmill with our tour. The windmill moves a large wheel that smashes seeds to produce the oils. Each windmill is a separate charge (so there's no way to do a quick tour). We walked pretty fast to and from the windmill. When we arrived at this windmill the demo had already started and we could not see what he was talking about because there were too many people (72 on this tour) inside. There is only enough time to walk to and see one windmill in one hour, which is all the time we had here. The one we saw would have been fine, if we didn't have so many people and we could see.
There are seven windmills here and other buildings. I think you might need 45 min plus per each windmill. And there is a museum here and it looks like a good sized museum. For Karen and I this would normally be an all-day adventure.
Google has been working with the Netherlands on harnessing wind power even further. Watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwL0O5nXe0
It's 20 minutes to our next stop, the end of tour back in Amsterdam. Our next tour bus is parked right behind. And there are still seats left upstairs. We grab two seats on the right side and start our tour with an hour ride to Delft.
We have a live commentary in two languages from our on-board guide. There are 88 canals in Amsterdam. The panels along the freeway protect the residents and workers from the noise and pollution of the cars on the freeway. KLM, created in 1919, is the oldest airline still using its original name. It has also merged with Air France. The top of the blue container along the freeway shows sea level.
The Delft Factory Tour: their building is amazing and very old and decorated with tile but not the blue Delft tile. We learn they have two signatures that they sign on each of their pieces. The first one means hand painted at this factory. The second means it was made here, but they did not hand paint it; It's "ROYAL DELFT 1653". The hand painted items were very expensive.
Then we went to a hotel parking lot for a walk to the city square of Delft. Buses are not allowed down the city streets. We went to where the new church is, just across the square from the old church. Since we did not have lunch we broke off from the group early and grabbed a Subway teriyaki chicken sandwich (yes, we have a picture, but the town is so beautiful so you get to see that).
Back on the bus and we are driving to The Hague. In 10 minutes we arrive and start a bus tour of the city. This is where the embassies are in Holland and we drive by the embassies and where each ambassador lives.
We arrived at Madurodam miniature Holland at 6:45 and have one hour to walk around it. Nobody told us to bring 10 cent Euros to make all the mechanical things go. There was an amusement park, the airplanes, and some music but no one had dimes or change to see them work.
There was a huge model of the Schiphol Airport that had the tower, huge terminal, with things inside and the planes that would have taxied to the gates, if we had the right coinage. Churches, the stadium, the harbor, the Rotterdam cruise ship, the Euromast in Rotterdam, locks the kids could send boats down and up.
It was a fun place. We could have spend a half day here. There was also a movie we missed, but others saw it about the guy George that built the place. We buzz through the gift shop getting an ice cream and coke to split.
On the way home, in the first ten minutes or so, we pass through a town where the elite live. The Royal family lives here deep in the forest on the right. The forest is huge. You can't see anything of the house or gate or anything from where we are. Our full day ended back in Amsterdam around 9pm.
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