Epic British Vacay: Holland (with Cheese!)

And I’m finally back to tell you more about Holland! Sorry for the delay – a little present day update: Daniel fell on the cruise ship, hurting his thumb, which wasn’t mentioned in my posts because it seemed minor at the time. But since then, he’s been to the doctor because it wasn’t healing properly, and found out he tore a tendon! So his thumb is in a big brace, and we’ve been dealing with all that before he has surgery for it next week. And that (as well as the gorgeous weather and tempting pool) is my excuse for taking so long to write up the last posts, whether valid or not.

July 6, 2024 (Day 17): Holland!

We were so relieved to wake up and realize we felt so much better than yesterday – especially considering out lack of meds. So arming ourselves with cough drops, we took off to meet our bus for our tour at like 7:00 AM today. I would like you all to know that Amsterdam is creepy in the mornings. Every person we passed (and it wasn’t many), looked like they wanted to mug us. There was one guy who followed us down random streets for awhile until we passed a construction crew (and also I kept looking back at him so he would know I saw him). It could have been innocent, but it still felt creepy. We were relieved when we finally reached our meeting location, next to a beautiful river, and boarded the bus for our tour of Holland!

And it was SO PRETTY. Now that was what I had been imagining Amsterdam itself would look like. As soon as we got out of the city, we started seeing beautiful countryside and cute homes. And our very first stop was to see some windmills at a place called Zaanse Schans. While clearly catering to tourists, it was still so much fun to walk through the cute little village-like place and take pictures next to windmills that, while not currently being used for anything other than show, used to be working windmills! There were also black sheep there, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in real life before. We walked through a cheese store and got to do some more tastings, which, considering my love of cheese, was awesome, and bought a delicious ham and cheese croissant sandwich and coffee. This was our first time having to pay to use a bathroom, and it was a good thing they had credit card machines because we haven’t picked up any Euros yet.

We left just as about half a dozen more tour buses arrived, so huge props to our tour guide for getting us there first, even if it meant most of the shops were closed. Next, we went to a small town called Edam, which was exactly how I had pictured Amsterdam being. Cute, small, pretty, and best of all, NO ONE SMOKING. If I thought the canals in Amsterdam were pretty, they were nothing compared to the ones in Edam. We walked through the town, admiring the buildings, the canals, and hearing about old churches that were originally built in the 15th and 16th centuries.

And then, the stop I admit I was most looking forward to – the cheese factory! It was called De Simonehoeve and I made Daniel get a picture next to their giant wooden shoe (he’s lucky we were in a hurry or I would have made him get inside it). We were all herded into a large room where the gentleman who (I think) ran the factory explained how cheese was made, and how long young cheese was aged vs old cheese (ranging from months to years), etc. And then he brought us into the next room and made a wooden shoe to show us how they were made with modern machinery, and showing us different types of wooden shoes. After the presentations, many people looked through all the different wooden shoes for sale (of all sizes and types!), but, predictably, Daniel and I went straight for the cheese room, where we proceeded to add two more pounds of cheese to the four we were already bringing home, and then took a picture in front of their mini windmill outside.

From there we went to another small town to eat lunch – we shared a seafood platter that was surprisingly good – and made our way to the beach for all of 3 minutes, just long enough to snap a picture before the wind tried too hard to blow us away.

One last stop at another incredibly picturesque town where I was very glad I had shorts on under my dress based on the continued wind, we admired more cute houses and pretty canals, I got to see a plastic cow tipped over (and Daniel took a picture for me so we can prove cow tipping is real), and then we headed back to Amsterdam where we got to take a ferry across the river to head back towards our hotel.

We stopped by a pharmacy to try and find more meds for our flight the next day and succeeded only in locating some Ricola cough drops, passed a supposedly Italian bakery boasting of delicious-smelling pizza and delicious-looking cheesy pretzels and couldn’t resist stopping. We won’t make that mistake again. I don’t know how pizza can smell that good and be THAT dry and bland. Same with the pretzel. I mean, we did finish them – but mostly because we were hungry. Back in the hotel, we rested awhile, packed for tomorrow, and then changed and headed back out for our wine and cheese cruise! Now that I would go back to Amsterdam for. They had such a nice little set-up, with a platter of different types of cheese, dipping sauces, peanuts, and bread, and then we could choose between red, white, and rose wine. It was so fun being so close to the water and Amsterdam from the canal itself was so much prettier. We chatted with the couple who sat next to us, who were quite nice and had just started a month-long vacation, and I still pray we didn’t get them sick!

All in all, it was a lovely day and I’m so grateful that we were able to still do our tours and if I go back to the Netherlands, I would totally stay in the countryside!