Amsterdam Day 3

We began today with a quest to find 2 tandem bikes that we could ride out into the countryside. The quest failed as bikes apparently rent rapidly in Amsterdam, at least the few tandems do. Our plan was to ride out to Zaanse Schans to see some windmills, that was not to be. In the end this may have been for the best as I am always careful with my kiddos on board and between our novice tourist navigational abilities and the other newbies not always looking for bikes we could have had a tangle. In any case, it was a great morning to snap some photos between bike shops and we are going to try to bike again once in Belgium. 

The man that took this picture said that there is a stock background image in Windows 7 that is a picture of the building right behind my head, if you can see it through the bald glare. 

Had to include another shot of this collection of bikes. 

Today we saw our first Dutch style windmills live and on the canals. 

These windmills were used for a wide variety of tasks over the years, mostly grinding to make things like mustard and snuff.  But their power was also used for tasks like cutting wood. This particular set of windmills were all spinning when we were there and we stepped inside one for a look around. You could feel the power as the whole building would shudder with each revolution of the huge set of blades. The mechanical energy created by this was pretty amazing as you watched the gearing interact.

I put the camera into multi-frame mode and attempted to capture a frame or two with the blade in an interesting position. 

After this we checked out a clog maker knock out the basic carving of a shoe in just a few minutes. The cutting of the outer is handled by a machine that rotates a model shoe with a floating guide that causes the rise and fall of a cutting head on the new block.  The inside is handled in a similar way but this time it is a spinning shaving head that is directed by a person pushing the guide around in the cavity of the model shoe. The demonstration was nothing too special, it was narrated in Dutch, that may have caused us to miss a thing or two. This information may come in handy if I every come across some used clog making equipment on Craigslist. 

We did not meet any strange folk in the way back to Amsterdam today, but we did meet with this chaotic main drag which we decided to forgo for some quieter back streets. 

We settled in for a nice dinner and part of a movie. The kids discovered The Lord of The Rings trilogy on the movie shelf and drew their swords in favor of making it the evenings event. 

Images in Amsterdam Day 3.