In answer to the question in the title -- cheese, wooden shoes, dikes and windmills. And today we saw all of the above.
In Volendam, we had a presentation explaining cheesemaking by one of the last small cheese manufacturers. Most of the cheese in the Netherlands is now processed by big factories, but the stuff from this little place was tasty.
The ferry took us to Marken, and there we visited the clog maker in his little workshop. This isn’t one guy whittling, he has machines working on the same principle as a key cutter so that he duplicates moulds. He turns out a shoe in a few minutes and then it dries to the hard clog before getting its final polish.
Onto the bus again and over the dikes back to the ‘mainland’ for the final stop of the day -- the windmill. The one Joan and I visited was one which historically had been used to grind dyes for the textile industry. What a beautiful motion and system of gears to translate wind energy to grinding.
As our tour was just 5 hours, there was time left in the day for a visit to the Van Gogh museum, newly opened in the renovated museum. Vincent had a sad life and his story and development of technique were well chronicled. Most of his famous paintings were on display. The colours, though somewhat faded we are told, were magnificent.
We are looking forward to a day which does not include a 7 am wake-up call. We have tickets to the Rijksmuseum, but it doesn’t open till 10!
I can’t seem to upload a photo today, sorry!
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