We all slept in this morning and just relaxed after our day of traveling yesterday. We then had to run out and get a few food staples to get us through this week. The weather was about 80 degrees and gorgeous and with our time next to the ocean now horribly short, we headed out to the beach.
We ate lunch at a wonderful little cafe right on the beach at Arradon. We then took a long walk along the waterfront before letting the kids just play in the sand. Enjoyed every minute! It was then back to reality with 2 weeks worth of dirty clothes for 6 people with no washer and dryer! Josh and I took off for the laundromat and at 10 Euros a load, were able to get a big chunk of our laundry done. We even managed to squeeze in a walk through the old town of Vannes while waiting for the clothes to dry.
Okay, here's Amsterdam... We took a bus tour out to the little historic windmill village of Zaanse Schans. Here, we were able to watch a small demonstration about making cheese as well as watch a wooden shoe maker in action. Max loved the wooden shoes and was eager to have his own pair. We were surprised to learn that they are still quite commonly worn in Holland for manual labor, especially in areas where steel-toed boots would be required in the U.S. From Zaanse Schans, we headed by bus to the beautiful little canal town of Edam, best known for it's cheese of the same name and for gouda cheese. They have a bustling cheese market that is open one day a week during certain times of the year. We were fortunate enough to be there on one of those days so the kids and I enjoyed all sorts of cheese samples and buying a few to take home. From Edam, we headed back to our ship for lunch before taking off again after lunch for a 90 minute canal cruise around the city of Amsterdam. The 16th century architecture of the narrow, beautiful houses built along the canals was just stunning as were the multitudes of bridges. We saw more bicycles that we could possibly count and understood that due to the narrow streets and many, many bridges, this is still the preferred way to travel through the country.
I think we will all have a bit of trouble going to bed tonight since our internal clocks are so screwed up! We changed time zones at least 8 times during our cruise and some nights, it was light until long after 1 a.m. and light again by 4 a.m.!
Well... I tried. After two hours of uploading, my pictures just stopped... So, I promise that I will try again in the morning so you can see at least a few pictures of Holland.
No comments:
Post a Comment