Today as our last day of the Amsterdam city-card so we had planned to go to Zaanse Schans to enjoy some outdoor exploring of windmills. As we awoke, the weather was awful but we decided to stick to our plan and to try and enjoy what we could despite the rain.
Arriving at Zaanse Schans we started off at the clockmakers’ museum which was very interesting. We learned about how the clock mechanisms worked and how they were developed over time (pun intended!) The Amsterdam clocks were very decorative and quite amazing.
We then moved on to to the saw mill and saw live cutting of trees powered by the windmill. Again amazing! Completed by a lovely hot chocolate to warm us up!
Then we went on to the paint grinding windmill which was very noisy and had a less friendly atmosphere! But it was still very interesting. Dad managed to negotiate the steep steps with no problem!
After that we went back to the car to warm up and to eat lunch. We then decided to continue to Volendam since it was still raining too much to want to explore more outside. At Volendam we started at the cultural museum and enjoyed seeing the typical costumes and furnishings. A rather unusual exhibit was an incredible decoration of a local artist’s attic with cigar papers!
And so on to Volendam harbour, in the rain, after dressing dad up in David’s cape. Here we enjoyed the harbour and the cheese museum (with samples to taste). We then bought a chilli peanut butter from a shop called Peppernuts! There we also tasted their candied nuts which are traditional for St Nicolas day on 5 December.
