Our Trip to Europe

Day 14 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

We had an early excursion again. Off the boat at 7:45 and on our way to Edam. Our first stop was at Zaanse Schans which is a museum of sorts. They moved many of the old wooden homes and stores along with several windmills out of the town center and set up a new town. People actually live and work there so I guess you could say it is a working museum. The bad weather was definitely back, cloudy and rainy. I took quite a few pictures of the windmills but they will require a lot of editing as it was a very dark day.

We didn’t have time to go into any of the windmills, just walk by them and take photos. That is the problem with the shore excursions. You get to see a lot but you don’t get to really explore anything for lack of time.

We headed to Edam which is known, of course, for it’s cheese. What a beautiful little town. Very quaint and old fashioned. Most of the homes and businesses were very old – no modern buildings here!! They were celebrating their 650 years as a town so the entire place was decorated and many of the people were in period dress – even the children. It was very interesting and absolutely beautiful.

Our next stop was at a local cheese farm. They explained how they made cheese, the old fashioned way, and then we were able to taste several of the cheese’s they make. They were delicious and we were very tempted to buy some but knew we would have to lug it all over Europe with us. I’m sure we will have additional opportunities to eat European cheese.

We enjoyed our visit to Amsterdam. We had opted not to really see the city of Amsterdam during our cruise stop as that is where we start our land tour and will have two days in that area to see everything.

I can’t believe we have already been gone for 13+ days. The cruise absolutely flew by and we enjoyed every minute of it. Our only complaint is that we would have loved to have had more time at several locations to spend exploring.

Tomorrow we head back to London – will try to plan our sightseeing for tomorrow this evening before turning in for the night. We enjoyed our tablemates and will exchange e-mail addresses with them at our final dinner this evening.