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We travelled past Cologne and crossed the border into the Netherlands. We passed canals and windmills. Apparently there are only about 1,000 working windmills left in Holland.
Sin City....
Tav2006-01-13 19:02:16
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We travelled past Cologne and crossed the border into the Netherlands. We passed canals and windmills. Apparently there are only about 1,000 working windmills left in Holland.
The countryside is amazing, with green fields and crops and cows and people on tractors. There are a lot of dairy farms here, guess it goes to make the cheese they are famous for. All of the paddocks are divided by canals!! They say that Holland is 2.5m below water level and Amsterdam itself is 4.5m - hence the water everywhere on the sides of the roads and between houses etc.
People around here cycle everywhere, it’s so well set up with bike tracks and if you don’t move they will run you over!! There are 6 million bikes in Holland and 600,000 of them are in Amsterdam. There is a 3 level bike parking area!! It’s insane, don’t know how you would find it amongst all the others! People of all ages ride them from kids to grannies and in all sorts of outfits. Interesting way to pick up your date!!
We went to a place in Edam where we all got given granny bikes to do a sight seeing bike tour. It was leisurely thankfully
since I’m not that good with bikes, we went up the pretty cobbled streets, across canals and back to base - it was a nice 30min ride.
Then onto the cheese and clog factory.
We first saw a women making cheese, she explained part of the process before allowing us to try some - it was all good. Both the Cheese and Clog factories are family owned and run businesses.
Then it was time to see how they made clogs by hand. They are mainly made throughout Holland by machine as hand making them takes about 2hrs per shoe and the skills were passed from father to son and not too many young boys want to follow the tradition anymore. Many years ago, you could tell a lot about a person by their shoes. It would tell
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See photographs from:
Netherlands Gallery
