Europe Trip: Netherlands

When you see windmills, you know that it's Netherlands! Although many countries have windmills now, but I'm sure Holland will come to your mind first when you see a windmill! From Belgium, we headed to Netherlands and were in the village of Zaanse Schans, a popular tourist attraction site with a collection of well-preserved windmills, all built centuries ago! 

Holland is also famous for its cheese, and this is a cheese making factory. Cheese comes in vibrant colours! Green, yellow, red etc. Traffic light-like. We tried out some cheese there, some have pungent smell, some are salty and I don't think I've tried any sweet cheese yet. 

Wooden shoes (not sure what these are called exactly) is also a well-known product from this village. Perfect as souvenir, but I doubt it is comfortable wearing them. 

We chose the largest shoe of them all!

Next, we headed to a diamond store and the diamond below weighs 1 carat! Since most of us are on a budget, we didn't spend anything in the diamond store, same to an uncle who was on the same tour with us! Lucky his wife didn't pester him to buy her one!

Our last stop was in Armsterdam, the picturesque scene here looks like the Venice of Netherlands. Other than the rivers, red-light district is also an attraction to the public. Unfortunately no camera is allowed in the red-light district to respect the privacy of the prostitutes and we don't dare to risk anything while being on a foreign soil. 

What I can say is it's something different with this city, the half and fully naked prostitutes will try to seduce men from the inside of the building, through a glass window or door. So it was more like a window shopping before 'purchasing'. Don't like women? Spotted few gay bars around with guys wearing spandex and revealing attires! 

Just in time for the first dinner in our Europe trip! It's a Chinese cuisine in Armsterdam, and the taste was not bad!

Armsterdam is nicely furnished with bicycle cycling paths all over the city. Therefore you can see the tremendous amount of bicycles available in Armsterdam, and a double storeys 'parking lot' just for bicycle! 

Last activity of the day - River cruise. The cruise was a drag, 40 mins long. Not many things to see other than some uniquely designed modern buildings along the river. 

We only slept for few hours in the 48 hours from the UK to Netherlands. Yet, we were still quite energetic to go for a supper in McD nearby of our hotel. I only had an ice cream while some of my friends had burgers. I'm glad to say the ice cream in Netherlands tasted as good as in Malaysia :)

NEXT - Germany