Amsterdam, July 24, 2016

Sunday, July 24, was our third day in Amsterdam, and the day the Rhine cruise was to begin.  But the cruise would not begin until early afternoon.  So, in order to make the best use of our remaining time, our local host, Rita, arranged for a guided tour of an area outside the city.

The first place our guide took us was the Zaanse Schans (ZAHN-ze skhahns), a re-created 17th-century village in the town of Zaandijk, on the Zaan River, about 12 miles northwest of Amsterdam.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4250244,4.8350399,13z

Zaanse Schans is an open air museum, reminiscent of Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village in the U.S.  There are stores and workshops, and a lot of reconstructed windmills, all staffed by volunteers from the local area, all of whom speak English fluently.

(Click on any image to see a high resolution version.)

Sheep May Safely Graze

A bit of kitsch

This is a workshop where the volunteers talk about wooden shoes, how they were used and how they were made.  They demonstrated making a wooden shoe with modern equipment.  (Quite a bit faster than the 17th century methods!)  And, if you like, you can buy a pair to take home.

The windmills all have names.  This is "Het Jonge Schaap" ("The Young Sheep").  It is a working sawmill, constructed between 2005 and 2007 from drawings of the original, built in 1680 and demolished in 1942. Except for a modern crane, the workers used the same tools and materials that were used to build the original.

We took the tour and saw a demonstration by one of the workers who built the reconstruction.  He showed us the mechanism that converts the rotating motion of the windmill to the up and down motion required by the saws.  This was a Dutch invention and valuable trade secret in the 17th century.

By Quistnix at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3891095

After Zaanse Schans, our guide took us to a working cheese farm in the same area,  the Henrik Wilig farm at Jacobs Hoeve.

This is a serious manufacturing operation that sells cheese around the world, but it also caters to tourists. Their web site says that over a million tourists visit their farms each year.

A pretty girl showed some of the cheese making equipment to us.

This is a storage room, where cheese is aged before being shipped.  The wheels are color coded according to variety.

On the way back to Amsterdam, our guide took us by a beautiful old village.  This is a real village, where people live, not a tourist attraction.  He dropped us off to walk around a bit and take pictures, something he probably was not supposed to do.  After we got back to the van, he seemed to leave in a hurry.

Back at the hotel in Amsterdam, we said goodbye to Rita, our wonderful local host, and boarded a bus to be taken to the ship, the S.S. Antoinette.  The cruise line took care of our luggage.  We just attached tags with our names and room number, and they took care of getting the luggage to our room on the ship.

Our stateroom was small, about like a typical moderate priced hotel room in New York City.

The room did include a "French balcony".  This is a small area with two chairs and a coffee table, and a window that can be opened.  It is essentially taken out of the area that would otherwise be part of the stateroom.  There are sliding glass doors between the French balcony and the room.

 Ours was a mid-price room.  More expensive rooms have a real balcony, and a lot more space.  But they were much more expensive.  Less expensive rooms just have a window, and were not much less expensive than ours.  This seemed like a good price point.

Finally underway.

The Rhine does not go to Amsterdam.  The first 45 miles of the cruise are on the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, which connects the harbors of Amsterdam with the Ruhr industrial area in Germany and is said to be the busiest canal in the world.  http://www.routeyou.com/en-nl/location/view/48678495/amsterdam-rhine-canal


First bridge.  The word on the sign is Amsterdamsebrug  or "Amsterdam Bridge".

View from the top deck, looking from back to front of the boat.  There is only about five feet of headroom in the rooms on the top deck (a restaurant and a bar, not open at this time.)  The tops have been lowered to permit the boat to fit under the bridges on the canal.  Once we are on the Rhine, they will be raised, and we can comfortably walk around in these rooms.

A load of scrap metal, going to Amsterdam.

We saw a lot of barges like this, carrying stuff to and from Amsterdam.

A low bridge.  Felt like I needed to duck.  
The tall guys must have really cringed.

In most places along the canal, there were levees on each side of the canal.  Often the water level in the canal was well above the level of the surrounding countryside.  There were obviously planted trees all along the levees.





I generally think of the Netherlands as a densely populated, highly industrialized country.  But from the canal, you would think that it is essentially an agricultural region, and a rather beautiful one.

The boat was incredibly smooth.  There was essentially no sense of motion.  The scene outside seemed to be just passing by, as if we were watching a movie.  We slept well, and would wake up the next morning in Germany,