We had a busy day planned for the last full day of our trip. We had heard about this giant flower auction outside of Amsterdam. Andrea gave us directions to it so we found the correct bus and rode about an hour to Aalsmeer, the location of the second largest building in the world. Every day millions of flowers are sent here, auctioned off, and shipped to customers around the world. We toured the plant and watched the auctions taking place and the orderly chaos in this huge warehouse.
After Aalsmeer, we headed back to Amsterdam and took a 15-minute train ride to Zaanse Schans, another neighboring town. From downtown we had to take a passenger only ferry to get to Zaanse Schans. This area was once home to over 600 windmills, but only about 6 remain now. I was excited to see, as I put it, “windmills in the wild” (We had seen plenty in town, but not along the countryside). We were able to tour a working sawmill. The harder the wind blew, the faster the blades cut the wood. It was interesting! We also went through a cheese farm and wooden shoe museum. Once returning to Amsterdam we had enough time to walk around the streets and do some shopping. We had to pack our bags and find a way get our souvenirs home safely. We still only had our 2 backpacks and small day pack, but we managed to get everything in.
Just a tiny fraction of this huge warehouse
One of the six auction rooms
No comments:
Post a Comment