Last days

Tuesday morning we walked to our bus tour. I had booked the tour about a month before, thinking we might need something to do during our extended stay in Amsterdam. We rode on a big double decker bus, with separate morning and afternoon tours. The morning tour guide told us we were going to go to a cheese farm and a clog factory. Sounded a bit familiar, but because we were on a big tour, the destinations were much larger and more touristy than our stop on the bike tour. One of the stops was in an area with lots of wind mills and we were able to go up into one and enjoyed some nice views.

We drove back to Amsterdam and then got on another big double decker for our second tour. This one took us to Delft where we got to see certified Delft ceramics being made. Then we went further into the city and were able to walk around. I discovered that this was the town Vermeer lived in and I would have loved to have had more time to explore the streets where he painted. It is a very quaint town with canals and bridges like Amsterdam, but everything on a smaller, quieter scale. We drove through the Hague and had many important buildings pointed out to us, but we only stopped briefly at the Peace Center. We rushed through all this so that we could get to a miniature city. A rather odd place that would probably go out of business, if not for big tour buses pulling in. It was an interesting day, but we probably won't do many more of these package tours.

On Wednesday, we stayed near our hotel and walked to the van Gogh museum. The museum was very interesting with his works arranged in chronological order. We had lunch in the park and then went to the Rijksmuseum. You could see the roof of the museum out our hotel room window, so after many long walking days, we enjoyed staying nearby. It was great to see all the Rembrandts and Vermeers. We enjoyed the gift shop as well. After that, we walked to Vondelpark and enjoyed some nature. For our final night, we went back to the area we had been to our first night and had dinner in an Irish Pub. I got the Shepard's pie I was hoping for in London. It was an enjoyable final night in Europe.