Today we were in Amsterdam - a very 'liberal' city. We did a canal boat trip which was lovely, especially with the glorious weather. We are told that Holland very seldom has fine weather and it got up to 25 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, so we’ve been lucky.
The buildings here are tall and thin - and crooked! They lean against each other for support, and some are ‘stapled’ together with metal rods to hold them up. We were told that they are sometimes built sloping forward to provide rain protection to the front of the house -maybe they haven’t heard of eaves! We also visited a diamond factory and saw a couple of $100,000 diamonds (stones only, the ring would’ve been extra), but we were not tempted to buy. I did manage to get a lovely ring stuck on my finger, but they got it off me in the end!
Passed briefly through the red light district - that was an eye opener!
Amsterdam has a population of 800,000 and has 600,000 bicycles, so you had to watch out for them. There were parking buildings for bikes where we saw thousands of them together - quite a sight.
After that we headed out to the countryside where we toured a working windmill, run by a very eccentric fellow, as well as a cheese factory (yummy sampling) and a clog making workshop, both with the obligatory entertaining host.
Lastly we visited a most beautiful lakeside town, which was hugely tourist focussed - t-shirts, windmills and other souvenirs. Sampled Dutch Apple cake - it was a little disappointing.
Our fellow members of the tour are a friendly bunch, with a range of ages of 40ish to 70ish, but we’re having a good laugh with them all.
Germany tomorrow, including a cruise on the Rhine!
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