I got up at 8:15 with my alarm. I have somewhere to be today!

I got dressed and walked about 10 minutes through De Pijp to Omelegg for breakfast. Rain was in the forecast, but it was merely overcast 👍

Back home at 10:00, right on schedule, I put clean clothes away and did back stretches before heading out to the tram stop around the corner, just as the 4 arrived four minutes early 😬

I still arrived early myself at Amsterdam Centraal for the 11:30 start to Airbnb Experience “Windmills +Tulip fields + Keukenhof”, which I’d excitedly booked back at home. Riding a bike and seeing Keukenhof were on my must-do list, and I was thrilled that this Experience offered the opportunity to do both, with a bonus visit to Zaanse Schans, which came up in my research on day trips from Amsterdam.

A train accident meant both that our guide Hans and two group members arrived late and that we couldn’t leave when they arrived. The Experience listing on Airbnb described group size 10, but including Hans there were 15 of us. I met and chatted with many of the attendees, not terribly concerned about when we would get going or how the day might be affected by the delay. In our group were: Hans; myself; Devyn and Darren from North Carolina; Ken and Paula from Brisbane; Jian from Shanghai; Gil and Carol from Salt Lake; Mikaela (mih-KAY-la) and Mikaela (mih-KYE-la) from Prague; Lauren and Melissa from L.A.; and Anthony and Casuandra from Florida.

I hadn’t noticed that Hans left for a while; he and four of the group returned with bikes, at which point we headed into the train station. I felt like I might have missed something as far as when the rest of us would get bikes, but I figured I’d know when I needed to know. Hans ushered us through the train gates. I might have been able to organize this tour on my own, but it sure was nice to have it all handled, not needing to worry about tickets or where we were going.

It was maybe a 20-minute train ride into Zaanse Schans and another 15 minutes on foot from the station to the village. Zaanse Schans is a recreation of 18th-century life in a mill town, with both houses and windmills having been relocated there to preserve the history. Across the bridge into the village is a view of 5 large mills: a spice mill, a pigment mill, two saw mills, and an oil seed mill.

At the entrance to the village, we learned that the houses are all green because this was the least expensive pigment when they were painted. It was unfashionable for the roof to be exposed, so all the house facades extended vertically upward beyond the apex.

We walked over a small bridge into the village. While the houses were relocated here to preserve their history, actual modern residents live in them and just deal with the millions of tourists walking by them all year long. We passed by picturesque homes and through fields with sheep and onto bridges over tiny waterways with ducks.. lovely.

We arrived at the wooden clog workshop with displays of the many types of clogs and a clog-making demonstration in progress. Mostly it was a gift shop, and I passed quickly through, stepping outside and asking Carol if she would take my photo in the comically large yellow clog out front of the shop.

We moved on to the cheese shop, which we were all pretty excited about. There were about 20 different cheeses to sample. I found myself returning a few times to the truffle cheese 🤤. I also bought a small jar of truffle mayo. I never saw any of Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows and so my first experience of him, maybe within a year of when he passed away, was hearing him interviewed on Wait Wait Don’t Tell me on NPR. He was asked something to the effect of, “Which food trend are you not on board with?” and he answered, “Truffle oil.” Sorry, Anthony, you lost me.

The Experience in total would be about 8 hours and didn’t include a lunch break. Many had brought their own food and some got food from the cheese shop counter. I got a midday coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich, which I ate as we walked back to the train station.

From Zaanse Schaans, we rode to Amsterdam Sloterdijk, not quite all the way back to Amsterdam proper, and changed trains.

As we waited, Hans showed me a website where you can purchase a heavily discounted train ticket to visit cities outside of Amsterdam as long as you travel in off-peak hours: 9:00 to 16:00 and 18:30 through the rest of the day. He explained that Dutch people are always in search of a bargain or discount.

The Anne Frank House is sold out almost through July, and Hans also told our group that the likelihood of us scoring the handful of tickets that are released at the beginning of each day was very low. You can access the site just before 9:00 and keep hitting Refresh, like trying to buy from Ticketmaster, but success was not likely. I wanted to visit the Anne Frank House more out of a sense that I should, not because I was looking forward to it, and I admitted to myself that I was not super disappointed to learn that it didn’t look very likely that it would happen.

It was about a half hour on the train to Hillegom. Here the rest of us picked up bikes that Hans keeps locked there. I thought at first that my bike was the right height and thankfully realized the seat needed to be raised, which Hans did for me, otherwise I would have ended up with very sore knees.

We rode through Hillegom to Lisse through fields of tulips that had just been cut down for the end of the season. I imagined the colors we would have seen here two weeks ago and couldn’t help but feel disappointed, though it was still a pleasant view.

We locked our bikes outside Keukenhof and gathered outside the entrance to make a meeting plan. It was 16:35, and Hans asked us to meet in the front at 18:10. Only 95 minutes to explore.

I grabbed a map; Hans had said the freshest tulips were in the back of the park, so I started in that direction. I came upon a pond surrounded by flowers with an instrumental, carousel/circus style version of Bohemian Rhapsody playing on speakers somewhere nearby, which was wonderfully surreal.

I found the source of the music, which somehow reminded me of a carousel, though it wasn’t round, just a tall and wide facade. The music changed to Shakira and Coldplay, and the tinny organ wasn’t so charming anymore. The music machine sat near a nice fountain that I should have been able to locate on the map; I realized the map made no sense and just strolled through the various gardens, which were an Instagram dream. If only it weren’t overcast!

It was just starting to sprinkle when our group met up at the entrance. Thankfully, it was light as we rode our bikes back to the train station. I tried to put up the hood of my raincoat, but it wouldn’t stay up, which was better as it was too warm.. the rain actually felt great. Ken had just had a knee replacement a couple weeks ago, and after riding to and walking around the gardens, Hans gave him an assist all the way from Keukenhof back to the station, holding on to his handlebars while riding his own bike. ❤️

It was 19:30 by the time we arrived back at Amsterdam Centraal. Many of us exchanged Instagrams before hugging our goodbyes. I was tired and began walking in the direction of food; I soon realized I’d stumbled into de Wallen, the famed Red Light District. Sex shops here, coffeeshops there, way too many people. I wanted to explore it more another time; my immediate desire was pub grub. Searching on Google, I found Brouwerij de Prael, which I would later find out is a recommended stop for being environmentally friendly and socially conscious, hiring people who might otherwise have trouble entering the job market.

I stood in the entrance for a while. There was a bar and tables and a hosting station, where employees came and went, seeing me and yet not seeing me. After a few minutes, I asked one, “Is there something I should do to be seated?” It was super busy but still sit-wherever-you-can-find-a-seat. There were stairs going up a level; she recommended I go down the stairs, past the occupied tables down there, to the left, and then back up a set of stairs near a second bar, where I indeed found an unoccupied table in a sort of tucked-away and upstairs corner of this giant brewpub.

While waiting at the entrance, I had chosen an IPA from a hanging set of chalkboard pieces, each with a beer name written on them. The bar back here had a different selection, though. I ordered a pale ale and some nachos. Beers aren’t served in pints here. In Belgium, I often had my choice of 25cl or 33cl. I never quite got used to centiliters, other than knowing 25 is too small and 33 is better but still smaller than I’m used to. I don’t know how much pale ale I was served, but I finished it before the nachos came, so I ordered another 🙂

I arrived home at 21:45, completely knackered. I experimented with Portrait mode taking a mirror selfie of my exhausted and slightly burnt face; must find sunscreen tomorrow (and add to my packing list that I should *always* bring some, not just for beach destinations).

On my laptop, I deleted some work emails and sent an email to Casuandra, who has an Android phone and couldn’t receive our group photo via Airdrop. I was too tired to look up what to do tomorrow. Also, when and where did I lose my sunglasses?

I went to bed at 23:30 — no alarm!