July 13 - Zaanse Schans

We left Amsterdam this rainy morning and headed for Zaanse Schans(a touristy town showing what life used to be like in The Netherlands).

On our way we enjoyed being stopped by this draw bridge while a boat went through.

 Due to the rain(and having left our umbrella's and West & Megs) we opted to start our tour in the local museum.  I have no idea what the museum was supposed to be about.  There was an exhibit on people who currently live in the town, some historical stuff, and a fake cookie and chocolate factory.  

Here we are virtually racing to see who could box the most chocolates.

 Boxing more chocolates(we also virtually boxed cookies...)

 (We've been watching Night at the Museum 2 a lot on this vacation and all of the virtual chocolate & cookie making stuff made me think of that.  I admit that it all was a bit ridiculous.)

The kids did get to make their own chocolate bar wrapper(we had to pay for the chocolate bar though).  

 Sweetie wrapping his chocolate bar.

 Woof-woof wrapping her chocolate bar.

 The finished products!

 A view of the Zaanse Schans windmills.  

 The windmills were used as sawmills, paper mills, paint mills, and oil mills.  I had no idea that they were used for so many different things.

The Little One in her backpack.  We got a lot of comments and looks about her being on our back, but in The Netherlands we got the most comments.  People did not like it.  (In fact they wouldn't let her into the Van Gogh museum on our back - not because of it being a backpack, but because they thought she was too constricted.  I'm not kidding, that's what they said.)  It was crazy to have so many people tell us that we shouldn't have her in a backpack.

 Back to traveling...  Here is Woof-woof in the wooden shoe factory.  It was interesting to see how the shoes are made.

And there were so many to choose from.  Wow!  This has become an art with some people.

 They also sold wooden flowers.  The Guy had Sweetie take a picture of him giving me a flower so that all of you would know that he does give me flowers.

 I even kissed him!

 Then we put the flower back....

The kids trying out some wooden shoes.

At this point it started raining really hard, so we opted to get on the road(to Brussels) instead of walking to another part of the town.  Someday...  ;)