No sleeping in for me on Day 3! After getting up to a nice and early 5 a.m. alarm, it was time to begin our agenda for the day. This included taking a tour around Royal FloraHolland, a flower auctioning company that prides itself on the millions of flowers it distributes per day inside its warehouse, which happens to be the largest building in all of Europe. These warehouses are so quick and efficient that buyers get their flowers within one day. This efficiency and quickness that the warehouse prides itself on lead to the warehouse also being very good at reducing the amount of waste produced during this process, and the machines in the warehouse were seen to be mostly electricity-based rather than fossil fuel-based.

After leaving RoyalFloraHolland, we took a tour of Schoonship–a neighborhood of floating houses that prides itself on being nearly 100% sustainable. These houses were completely solar-powered, composed of sustainable materials such as liquid cork and bamboo, and the human waste that leaves the houses is processed into bioenergy at a nearby processing plant. On top of this, the houses are beautiful while not being a disturbance to the wildlife, as plenty of birds were seen nesting around this watery neighborhood.

In the afternoon, we went to the extremely famous Rijksmuseum, which houses some of the most famous art ever created in history. The most famous painting I saw was Van Gogh’s self-portrait, which drew a large crowd of excited viewers. After getting a taste of how Amsterdam is evolving in the present and near future, I was able to experience a museum that celebrates the past accomplishments of Dutch culture.