Last Day in Amsterdam.

Our last day in Amsterdam, we got up early and took off with part of the group in a bus, headed to the outskirts of Amsterdam. It's kind of weird how similar the countryside of the Netherlands is to our own Iowa countryside. Flat, little bit of water, some treets, but otherwise, not much else. Our first stop, Zaanse Schans, was pretty much a windmill farm.

There were old school traditional windmills all in a row, about 10 of them, it was really pretty cool. We didn't have time except to walk down the row of windmills and take some cool pictures, but that was enough for me!

This sign was too cute to pass up, but even cuter, was the next stop on our little field trip. A mini cheese factory. Solidly for tourist viewing only, and not much of an actual factory, but we got to meet Mrs. Cheese (yes, thats what we were to call her).

Mrs. Cheese taught us all about how they make cheese there at the "factory" and the different kinds of cheese that we were about to taste. It was deliciously tasty cheese, nearly everyone in the group ended up buying a wheel or three.

Even we bought some cheese, despite the name Dyanamite Cheese, its not spicy, but an herbed cheese that tickles the tastebuds! And nextdoor to the cheese place, was a klomppen shop. It was a show room with the machines they make klompen with. They still use the machines they used when they originally started making wooden shoes, WAY back in the day. The man that ran the machines had carved himself a pair, drilled in some holes for laces, and painted the Nike swoosh on the side. They're sweet.

Something about bright shiny wooden shoes in lots of different colors just cheers me up....I didn't get any, and I feel like I should have. Apparently they are ridiculously comfortable, go figure.

After the cheese and shoe place, we went on the most boring canal tour ever. It was a full hour of the exact same view. Fogged up dirty windows, looking at the bottom half of sidewalks above. Woohoo. We did get to see this supposedly famous bridge though.

The canal tour led to a Diamond Factory, which was also a bust, they showed us how to cut a diamond, and then made a huge sales pitch for everyone to buy diamonds. Because we all know all college kids are just LOADED with several mil for a diamond ring. Our awesome sevensome left to find a place to eat, only to magically come across a Chinese restaurant doing some sort of ceremony complete with big Chinese dragon and a LOT of fire crackers.

The noise scared me so much, I backed straight up into the street, regardless of any cars coming. Needless to say, I survived, and we managed to find this cute little pizza place nearby. And it just so happened, that they had AMAZING hot chocolate. Sounds silly, but it was AWESOME. All hot chocolate should be that good.

Doesn't it just look extra yummy, all in the glass cup, so quaint!

Tim and I had to jet from lunch pretty quick in order to make it to the Versetzt Museum. It's the Dutch Resistance Museum, a small museum not in the main part of the city. It was by far the best Museum we went to though. And probably the best World War II Museum I have ever been to. I loved it. It went through Netherland's occupation by Germany and through the war. But it was totally unbiased, and had so many personal stories and details, and just day to day activity during that time period. It wasn't all about the guns and military, it was about the people and culture during that era. Highly suggested. We finished up right as the museum was closing, we timed it perfectly. We had some time to kill before meeting back up with our clan for dinner, so we perused the local grocery store, which was quite the experience. It was intense! People shopped like the store was going out of business in the next hour. Agressive. And the cheese aisle? Whoa buddy. GIANT wheels of cheese on the shelf. Who eats that much cheese?!

Next in order to kill time, we found a cheap internet cafe. We caught up on some email, some facebook, and just general knowledge that the world hadn't blown up outside of the Netherlands.

The hilarious part was that next to us was a line of Dutch teenagers, all playing Counterstrike, yelling at eachother in Dutch, but throwing in numerous English profanities. It was very amusing to say the least.

Finally met up with Ryan, Kristan, and the girls, only to have quite the debate on where to have dinner. We ended up going back to St. James Gate, the Irish Pub. Not too much excitement, just a big discussion on what we all do for a "living" and how Ryan and Tim's mothers are pretty much the exact same person, that was pretty humorous. A long wait for the tram in the freezing cold, and several rounds of the ING Dutch Lion Dancing commercial later, we were back for the night! Good bye Amsterdam! It's been grand, but we probably won't come see you again anytime soon.