Zaanse Schans

Day 4

We slept in until 7:30, got ready and had a quick breakfast at the hotel. The food is not bad, but also not what we are used to. Breads, meats, cheeses, corn flakes or museli, yogurt, some fruit and juices.

Before we could head out for the day we had to make a couple of stops: first to a store called Hema where we bought Tyler a pair of long pants and me some sun glasses since those are the two things I forgot. We then went on the hunt to buy allergy medicine for Trevor and it was a hassle! They don't sell medicine in regular stores here, you have to go to an apothecary. We found one but they can't sell me children's liquid allergy medicine without a prescription. Now, you can legally smoke marijuana in the Netherlands but heaven forbid you buy a children's liquid for hayfever! I ended up buying the tablets and Trevor will have to learn to swallow them.

Then, we hit the road. We had planned to attend two open-air museums today (Zaanse Schans and Zuiderzee) but only made it to one. Everything just takes longer than you think it will. Zaanse Schans has a couple working windmills and those were fun to see. We went inside the spice mill, the paint mill and the saw mill. The saw mill was my favorite! It was so cool to see how they cut the wood and how it would speed up and slow down based on the wind. We also went to a cheese-making museum and a wooden shoe museum. I got me a pair of wooden clogs! We had lunch there and got traditional dutch pancakes. I had ham and cheese, Brad had bacon and cheese, Tyler had apple cinnamon and Trevor had a plain one with whipped cream. The weather was absolutely perfect, around 80* with clear skies and a slight breeze.

Windmills

Wood shoe-making demonstration

My cute little family

Paint Mill

Saw Mill

Cheese-making

Houses on the water

Dutch Pancakes

We just got back to our hotel room and apparently there is a large festival of some sort happening in the square next to us. There had been loud music and now drums for the past half hour. There was a night run/walk throughout this city so they were playing to the masses on the square. I think it ended around midnight; I put in my ear plugs and went to sleep.