Introduction We have now arrived back home from our ‘Second Dutch Outing,’ had a quick rest and uploaded my 2200 photos, so now it is time to start compiling my trip report, and I hope everybody reading enjoys. We started out really well with our itinerary, however by Monday we were changing things left, right and centre. For various reasons, including lack of money, lack of storage on my memory card and complete lack of energy, we dropped the ‘mystery box’ collection (which was going to be Diergaarde Blijdorp). We also didn’t visit Stichting Schildpaddencentrum due to my amazing planning abilities, on choosing a day the place was closed – however this latter collection was no real loss as it gave us more time at Vogelpark Avifauna, allowing us to take our time and ensure we saw everything we wanted to. It also saved us a few euros, which was greatly appreciated. Originally, I was going to try and complete a full trip report to include the time we spent outside of the zoological collections. However, as most of our time outside the zoos was dedicated either to wandering around the city or to things that wouldn’t be decent to write about here, I have decided to keep this solely about the zoos that we visited. I will however quickly sum up that we went on the Countryside and Windmill tour on the Friday morning, which included visits to Zaanse Schans for its windmills and a talk from an oil miller, Volendam for its cheese factory and a talk on how the cheese is made, then some lunch before heading over on the ferry to Marken to see a demonstration from a clog maker. We found this tour to be very interesting and something quite nice and relaxing at the end of an exhausting but very fun week. We also came back with a nice small wheel of Volendam cheese which we’re looking forward to eating at some point. We didn’t go into the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh gallery due to the queues at each. We did see the buildings themselves, and I purchased a couple of Van Gogh prints for the house, those being ‘Café Terrace at Night’ and ‘Still Life with Sunflowers’ from a nearby cabin with various Van Gogh paintings on posters, t-shirts, ties etc. Also, due to money, time and exhaustion we missed the NEMO Science Centre and Micropia. We do hope to visit these places properly at some point in the future, so it is no major loss to us that we didn’t visit them on this occasion. We did leave today with a feeling that Amsterdam will become a frequent destination for us, even if only over weekends as and when we have the money for a quick trip away. Next Up: Artisklas
