We arrived around 8:00 in the evening after a very long and very hot drive. Remember, no AC in this little gem of a car. I only kid about that...really I am so grateful we were able to save some money in transportation expenses. We stayed at a cute little hotel, Hotel De Vijf Broers, right on the edge of the Zaan river. It had panoramic views of the windmill park at Zaanse Schans. Our room was that window to the left of the oval sign!
Awesome view from our window!
We were starving so we looked online for places nearby to eat. We ended up going to Pizzeria Tarantella. When we talked to people about going to the Netherlands, one thing that was always mentioned was that it's a nice place for American tourists since they speak English. Well, I took that to mean that everyone spoke English. For the most part, yes, they are ABLE. Do they speak it all the time? No. I guess it is a good sign, though, when the guy at the pizza restaurant speaks Italian, even if he can't communicate with you because he doesn't speak English. There was one waitress who spoke very broken English so luckily we did communicate well enough to get a yummy meal. You can't go wrong with pizza and salad.
On Monday, we started out by taking the train into Amsterdam. It wasn't in our original plans but after looking at a friend's blog, we decided we wanted to go to the Anne Frank house and knew we had to get there early to avoid huge lines. We hadn't bought our tickets beforehand (Mary Anne's printer was broken so we didn't make online reservations and then we tried once we got to the hotel but couldn't book online for the next day) so we made that our first stop of the day. If you ever go, book online ahead of time! Luckily we got there early enough but still had to wait about 10-15 minutes in line.
Whenever we were outside of our hotel, the air smelled chocolately. An odd smell that we couldn't quite figure out. On our walk to the train station, we discovered why. Just about a block from our hotel was a cocoa factory.
One thing about this area is that there are bikes EVERYWHERE! It's a main form of transportation and they even had a bike signal on their traffic lights. There were HUGE groups of kids that passed by us as they were riding to school. No school buses to be seen.
Just a very small sampling of what the many bike racks around the city looked like...
We had a "fun" experience at the Koog-Zaandijk train station. There were kiosks to buy train tickets into Amsterdam and they only took coins. We didn't have enough to buy two roundtrip tickets but there was a little store at the station. Of course it was closed. A few minutes after we were looking around like "what should we do" a guy opened up the store. There were signs that basically said no change without a purchase (or if you gave him a 5, he would give you 4.50 back...so basically you paid 50 cents to get change). So Rob found the cheapest thing (orange juice) and bought it. He had a 10 euro bill and asked if he could have the change in coins to buy a ticket, but the guy wouldn't give him that change! He would only give him a 5 bill and the rest in coins so we were still short to buy two roundtrip tickets. He said he would break the 5 bill but it would cost us 50 cents. Really??? We just bought something! Seriously, so lame. So we ended up just buying two one way tickets to get to Amsterdam and would buy a return ticket once we were there and got change from souvenirs in Amsterdam. The train was PACKED going into Amsterdam since it was rush hour time and at one point I thought "what was the point of even buying a ticket. It's not like anyone even verified that we had bought one. We just got on and got off." Luckily we're honest or else that thought would have kicked us in the butt on the way back had we decided not to buy a return ticket "since no one checks...ha!" When we were heading back to Zaandijk (not many people on the train this time), and all of a sudden this train conductor blows his whistle and gets on the train. THAT's why you buy a ticket! The guy did go around checking everyone's tickets (and all I could hear in my mind was the voice of the Dinosaur Train conductor "Tickets, tickets please"! LOL!) There was a guy that didn't have a ticket and the conductor showed him the sign that said there was like a 40 euro charge for not having a ticket. He must have been having a good day because he let the guy get off at the next stop without charging him so he could buy a ticket (but he didn't wait for him to get back on....he'd have to wait for the next one!)
In front of Amsterdam Centraal train station...
A cool building (not sure what it was) on the way to the Anne Frank house. See that lady on the left with her back to the camera. About 10 seconds before this picture was taken, she was chewing Rob out. Maybe it was because it was in a different language and we couldn't understand what she was saying but we couldn't stop laughing (after she left of course!) Oh it was funny! Rob was backing up as he was setting up to take the picture and bumped into her on accident. She was not happy about it and let him know! Oh man.
An up-close shot of the above building...
The front of a wax museum we didn't go into...
We tried following a map in the Rick Steve's book but a lot of the streets aren't on the map. Luckily we would come to an intersection every once in a while that would show the way.
This is Westerkerk, a church by the Anne Frank house, that we also didn't go into. Later I was reading through the Rick Steve's book and discovered that Rembrandt's body is buried somewhere under the pews.
The Anne Frank Huis. It was pouring huge drops of rain when we got out. Why didn't we learn our lesson from Salzburg and borrow an umbrella from Mary Anne on this little trip? We were standing there, wanting to take a picture and not wanting to get completely soaked. Apparently this cute couple had all day to just stand there under their nice red umbrella...
We made our way back toward the train station and stopped at the first shop that had umbrellas. About 2 minutes later, the rain stopped and we never had it rain on us again. 9 euro for two souvenir umbrellas. The kids like them so I guess you could say it was worth it.
We headed back to Zaandijk and then walked from the train station past our hotel to Zaanse Schans. It's kind of a living history windmill park. They have 5 or so working windmills and then cute houses and other museums and shops that you can wander through.
This was the first sign that made me wonder if I would be seeing tulips. In Utah, the daffodils usually start to come up first so I wondered if that meant there wouldn't be many tulips.
Most of the windmills charged about 3 euro per person to go into so we just hit the free one...the spice mill. Call me dumb, but I thought windmills just produced electricity from the wind. Inside different mills, attached to the "windmill", were the working parts of the mill. In the spice mill, as the windmill would turn from the wind, these stones roll and grind the spices. There was also an oil mill, paint mill, saw mill. You could see the saw mill working from the outside. Giant saw blades moved up and down as the wind mill turned. Pretty neat to think about how it all worked.
The cinnamon smelled so good!
Some of the pathways were made out of tiny shells. I thought it was pretty!
After we wandered down the path looking at the different windmills (they kinda all look the same from the outside), we headed to the cheese farm. Look you can rhyme the same message in both English and Dutch! So clever.
The taste testing line. Who knew there could be some many different flavors of cheese!
Love these signs...
Next we headed to the wooden shoe workshop. Hey Rob, make sure you get the shoes in the picture.
Um, you didn't get the shoes. Yes I did. No, THESE shoes. Oh, THOSE shoes...
Then a girl asked if we wanted a picture with both of us in the shoes. :) Aw, so cute.
Hey Kirsten, make sure you get the shoe in the picture. I'm pretty sure I got it. Hahaha...yes that became a lame joke the rest of the time.
Inside the workshop, they had displays of different types of shoes. It was cool to see how intricate some of the details were.
When they make a pair of shoes, they carve them both at the same time so they are an exact match.
Dutch pancakes! Pretty much another form of a crepe. I think we ate something similar in every country we were in...just a different name and a slightly different taste or size. We shared one since they were giant, topped with Nutella and whipped cream.
When we were leaving, we saw a group of students riding home from school. How fun would that be to ride through on your way to and from school each day. I want to live there!
This was the cute street that our hotel was on. There was a bakery across from the hotel where we picked up some yummy bread.
Stay tuned for the second half of the day in The Netherlands!
