Location: Zaandam, The Netherlands

Sav: We actually woke up on time for hostel breakfast today! Though that wasn’t exactly an exciting endeavour. We shuffled downstairs to find not even toast. But untoasted bread and butter, with sugarless coffee and a granola cereal. No thanks! Never thought I would miss regular old hostel toast.

We decided to take a short trip today towards a town called Zaandam, and one neighbourhood in particular called Zaanse Schans. Basically this is a collection of well preserved historic houses and functioning windmills.

Meag: Immediately after we got out of the train station, it smelled like chocolate. Could it get any better? Not much! There are eight windmills here, each still producing a different product. One was crushing spices, another was doing pigments for paint, and a different one was crushing cocoa beans. They had displays inside each windmill about the history of the specific trade of each product. The spice windmill was particularly cool and smelled like cinnamon. Hans, the old man who worked there, excitedly showed us around without us even having to ask. He showed us the three different wheels and explained how it wasn’t windy enough to get the two big ones going today, so they were only doing cinnamon. Hans also pointed out how the water is higher than the land on the other side of the dam…it was a little disconcerting once we noticed!

S: Just as a fun side note – Meaghan didn’t know what windmills did before today. This information could not go unshared. She knows now! And so do you.

We left Zaandam to head back to Amsterdam for dinner. Bellies full we decided to get a couple of beers at the hostel bar. We sat and reminisced for almost 3 hours, before deciding to go to a burlesque show. After last night’s red light tour it was clear that this was something worth doing in Amsterdam. At first it was a little shocking, but as the show went on we became more comfortable.

M: We walked around the neighbourhood afterwards to track down some warm waffles. As we were wandering, Savanna has this gem of an idea to share with me:

Sav – “You know what they need?”
Meag – “Who is th-”
Sav – “THEY NEED CANNOLIS ON WAFFLES.”

S&M