Europe Trip: Amsterdam Part 2
This is part five of many recapping my trip to Europe. Read about my fourth leg in Rome, third leg in Switzerland, second leg in France and first leg in Amsterdam (part 1).
Beyond an over-confident moment upon landing in Amsterdam causing our first real traveler’s headache, Amsterdam was great. I played tour guide for Ben and we booked an impromptu day-trip to see the countryside.
Amsterdam feels like Seattle in that its climate is cooler with always a chance of rain. We walked around the canal lined streets popping in and out of shops, restaurants and museums and mostly missed the rain.
Our day trip to the countryside was a real highlight. We toured a town with working windmills, visited a gouda cheese factory (omg best gouda cheese ever), stopped at a beautiful lakeside town, watched wooden shoes be made and learned more about the Netherlands’ history.
We learned most of the country sits below sea level, and canals/rivers run like veins all over its landscape. Yet, the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth. Much attention is spent on water control—creating dams and dikes to manage flood water, pumping water from lower canals to higher canals to eventually coax water to flow out to sea and creating “polders” or reclaimed land from beneath formerly wet areas.
The process for polder creation is incredible. They block off an area of water with dikes, then in a five year process pump water out to surface the ground below. This leaves them with soft soil that can’t support heavy farming machinery or many crops other than grasses. When we toured the countryside we saw miles and miles of lush green flat farms with cows and sheep grazing all over, completely circled by canals. It was beautiful and amazing.
Our time in each country seemed to go so fast, but by the time our two days in Amsterdam were done we were feeling ready to come home. Man, what a trip.
Scroll through more of my photos from Amsterdam here:
