Going for Golden 2022: Amsterdam: Off the Beaten Path

Our day started with a gentle walk around the less touristy and more picturesque parts of Old Amsterdam (my watch tells me we walked four miles today, and the student-tour sponsor in my head keeps thinking we need to be getting twice that amount! There’s more to see! Hop TO!, but then I remember that we’re on a gentle walk kind of tour and I unclench a little and relax into this pace. I think I’ll adjust quickly….

The gentle walk took us on a tour of a krullen, a coffee, several gardens, and old warehouses that have been converted to charming apartments. The warehouses and old buildings in this part of town were saved from demolition after WWII by squatters and artists who refused to move, so the town pivoted from their plans and decided to renovate the old buildings instead… which I do not suspect would work in the states, but it worked here! The little area we toured today is still a known artists’ community, and the evidence is everywhere.

Behold a krullen. The word means “curl,” but you’re looking at a urinal that’s available to men in public. Some Dutch things are weird.

There are little pockets of nature everywhere in this city!

A working wooden bridge! (They’re padlocked to keep kids [and tourist dads] from playing drawbridge….

Working shutters make me want working shutters….

A houseboat—they’re in all the canals and cost as much as apartments, but you get to live in a HOUSEBOAT!

This is one of the warehouses saved by an artist—built in 1629.

Gonna try to get this started in Herrin—recent grads hang their freshly empty backpacks outside with a Netherlands flag!

There have, it seems, always been people who fled to Holland to escape religious persecution (our own Puritans!), but this family was captured and murdered at Sobibor. The city is actively seeking out the victims of the Holocaust to place markers like these.

Then, later in the day, we hopped on to an excursion to the famed Dutch windmills—they still work and have been relocated, in come cases, to Zaanse Schans, where we got to see them up close! The little village also featured a wooden shoe factory, a cheese factory, and a chocolate factory. The whole town smelled like chocolate, all the live-long time we were on the tour and, gentle reader, the chocolate shop was LAST on our tour agenda. It was rude, but we lived to tell the tale. Barely.

Wooden shoes used to be made by hand, taking hours and hours, but now, there are machines that cut them out like keys—there’s a mold that is followed, and in less than five minutes, the outside of the shoe is done! Then, onto another machine, and the inside is bored out, all still in less than five minutes; the shoe is still wet at this point, and must dry out, but after that, you’ve got yourself a comfortable and indestructible pair of shoes!

Then a short jaunt through this charming little village brought us to a working windmill, and the gentleman who owns this mill makes paint dye (others do millwork, others make mustard, some make oil, depending on the family business). We were allowed to climb up to the top near the spinning blades, and I was a little nervous to get close… I had visions of myself clinging to the blades or being flung off into the canals, but all is well. I successfully got close enough to to get good video of the blades doing their work without damage to self.

Then to the shops! We sampled all the cheeses, had some ice cream, and bought some chocolate! Good day had by all, for sure, and I really think all little towns should have a chocolate smell.