Today we got a later start so that meant more time to sleep. We started with a goodbye to Amsterdam and a quick trip to the cheese manufacturer Henri Willig. We were given a brief history of the company and then shown how the cheese is made. The cheese making process was quite interesting since the same type of cheese could be aged for a longer period of time to give it different taste and texture.
After seeing the cheese manufacturer we explored Zaanse Schans, a historic town with windmills. Walking around the small town it was cool to see how certain areas looked like in the past. There was one building where you were able to see how the famous Dutch clogs were made. It seems that making shoes out of wood is an unusual choice but there was actual reason behind it. Not only where they cheaper but they were pretty water resistant for the Dutch climate. But when I first saw them I all could think about was splinters, splinters, and more splinters. Yet somehow the clogs are made so that you do not get splinters most of the time they are sanded. Seeing the amount of windmills I realized quite how important they were. The side of the river where the historic town was located was pretty small and it would not have had a huge population yet I saw at least 5 windmills. This makes sense when you realize how these windmills is where the energy to power anything really came from.
The most interesting part of the day was the ride from our Rotterdam hostel. Seeing how much different towns and infrastructure is here in the Netherlands compared to the US. When you passed smaller towns , most roads were only a single lane in each direction, many times there would be a bike path that would go along the road or it would be located on the side of the road. In America it feels like everything built revolves around the roads and highways, but here in the Netherlands this is not that case. We saw many train tracks and the road would be adjusted so that the tracks wouldn’t be altered. Also when there was a bridge built for when the road ran into a river, but the bridge was built for the boats to pass and the cars were boring under the water bridge. The craziest thing was a freaking airplane bridge!! Schiphol airport is pretty big, and there is one runway that is located farther than the rest which requires a quick trip that crosses over the road. Seeing such a huge plane go over the bridge was fascinating. Just thinking about all the weight that that pushes down not only from the plane but from the asphalt. The asphalt used in taxiways has to be able to withstand the weight of the planes and more materials have to be used to support this weight.
Today was quite a travel day but still fun. I’ll see ya tomorrow.
