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As great lovers of cheese, we were very excited to be visiting a cheese farm on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Clara Maria Cheese Farm and Clog Factory is situated just outside Amsterdam in the pastoral polders region. After a warm (and for Ellen a slobbery) welcome by the resident cows, our cheese-making experience began. After watching a brief video on the making of cheese it was time for us to get our hands dirty (so to speak) and donned in our blue booties, hair net and plastic apron, we entered the cheese making room and proceeded to make cheese! Particularly proud of ourselves, we left with huge grins on our faces! A quick drive through Haarlem where Ellen use to live – and it was onto Cees and Wil’s house for lunch in Hillegom, but not before stopping at the local supermarket to buy some Herring from the local fishmonger, situated in the parking lot. After a delicious lunch, we headed for the train station and made our way back to Amsterdam for our pub crawl through the City. No worries about drinking and driving with such an excellent public transportation infrastructure!

Cees had put together an incredible itinerary for our stay in Holland and included in this was a walking tour come pub crawl of Amsterdam. As we made our way through the streets of this amazing city, we were given a brief history of various parts of the city, got to photograph some fascinating buildings (such as the Zeedijk Wooden House, built in 1550 and one of the two remaining wooden houses in the City), bridges and monuments and once again marvel at the beauty of the canals and the houseboats that are moored in them. It was particularly interesting to be standing near the Kloveniersburgwal which, until the end of the 16th Century, was one of the outer city canals, and imagine nothing but open land on the other side – now filled with more incredible Dutch architecture of course. There were so many interesting facts and sights to take in, we really appreciate Cees putting this together for us and for being such a wonderful guide.

During the tour we stopped at a few old bars and marveled at our surrounds inside and out, whilst we sipped on our beverage of choice. Our last stop was particularly fun – it was the Wijnand Fockink, a bar selling “Jenever” (Gin) of many flavors. The tradition is to go up to the bar, stand in front of your shot glass of jenever….and sip! No hands allowed until after the first slurp! We tried two different flavors, soaked up the atmosphere in the little, crowded room and then headed out into the balmy November night, totally unusual for this time of year! We bid our friends goodnight and headed back to our little haven – our houseboat.