Day 3 of my trip arrives and it’s time for me to make my way back to Amsterdam from Cologne where I spent my last two days. If you haven’t read about it you can read about it here.

The trip back to Amsterdam was a lot less painful than the original trip from Amsterdam to Cologne. I figured out that by using the DB Navigator app I could see more details about the trains that I had to take to get back (total of 3 trains). The information I got was which platform the current train ends on and which platform the next train starts from. Having this information I could easily navigate to the next platform when I arrive at a station, avoiding the extensive workout of climbing up and down stairs to find the right platform.

Before getting too deep into the next part of my trip, a little background on how this trip came to be. About a year ago my friends and I decided that we want to meet up somewhere in Europe. Them living in Australia and me in South Africa it seemed like a great idea to get together and have an adventure at the same time. Even though the time difference is quite big (9 hours), we somehow managed to get 5 people arriving, at different times, in one city.

Amsterdam

I arrived at my hostel, ClinkNoord, and luckily my room was ready early and I could check in immediately. The setup is fairly similar to the Cologne hostel – 4 bunk beds, private bathroom and lockers. These lockers were at least slightly bigger and I could fit my entire backpack in.

At this point my friends were also in Amsterdam and we were getting ready to meet up. We spent a few hours just walking through the streets of Amsterdam catching up about a year’s worth of life stories. While walking we saw one or to bicycles, a few canals, went into a random church that looked pretty on the outside, ate ice cream, tried the local beer and discovered the difference between a “Cafe” and a “Coffeeshop” (the no space seems important). I think it would have made more sense that a “Coffee shop” sells coffee, but hey, that’s just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We got some dinner at The Pancake Bakery – I had a bacon, cheese and mushroom pancake as shown below). The pancakes were really good, not at all the cinnamon sugar plain ones I’m used to and I couldn’t get enough of the caramel syrup! We ended our evening having sharing a browny (testing the water) and checking out the red light district – which I was obviously not allowed to photograph.

What fascinated me the most throughout the day was exactly how many products one can make of weed. Lip balm, lollipops, ice cream, gum, and almost anything you can think of.

The red light district was also something that is obviously not very common everywhere in the world. It definitely gives a different meaning to window shopping!

Zaanse Schans

The next morning we took a train to Zaanse Schans along with all the other tourists to go look at the windmills. It’s a very quaint little town, very green. From the train stop you have to walk a bit to get to the town and as you get closer you get a glimpse of what you’re about to walk into, almost like a little teaser. After that you cross the river over the bridge where you can see the other windmills in the distance.

Walking into the town you are met with beautiful green gardens and landscapes.

Walking along the happy little path we saw a few more windmills and wooden houses. The first windmill is a spice windmill and it is free to enter it, which we did. The other windmills gives you the option to go inside and get out onto the balcony for 5 euros which we did not do.

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We walked all the way down to the last windmill and then took a boat to the other side of the river which comes out in the non-windmill street where people live. As we strolled up the road to get back to the main road where we came in, I was in awe of how neat and decorative some of the houses were. Below are pictures of some of the decorations I saw.

On one of the balconies I saw this interesting sight. The one is a statue and the other one is a live bird 😀

If you couldn’t figure it out.. the one on the right is the real bird.

Our next stop was Volendam, so we walked to the museum where all the buses stop. Next to the museum there was a wooden viewing deck that you could climb up to to see the green fields with windmills in the background.

Volendam

From Zaanse Schans we caught a bus to go to Volendam where we got some croquets and then lunch at a restaurant close to the bus stop. The food was really good and they did a good job at impressing us with their irish coffee presentation.

On the street next to the river there is a lot of little shops, bars and restaurants. There is a shop making waffles stroopwafels (very common dutch biscuit) fresh with the option of adding chocolate and other toppings – sweetness overload! We went into a clogg shop where we watched a video on how they make cloggs, and also why the dutch chose wooden shoes when the rest of the world was fine with other materials. Mainly the cloggs provide heat and are weather resistant, and there was also a lot of wood. I’m probably still missing a good chunk of the story, but seems it made sense at the time.