Day Nine - Day Trip with Private Holland Tours

---

After yet another amazing breakfast, we were picked up for our private day tour by Ray from Private Holland Tours. Ray was a wonderful guide who showed us quite a few interesting towns.



We started out in Monnickendam and Ray walked with us explaining what we were seeing. After that we drove to Marken and had another wander around, before stopping for some delicious apple pie and coffee. Next we headed to Edam, where I expected to find an array of cheesemakers, but there didn’t seem to be any at all! We saw so many different types of houses and it was interesting to see how people lived in these small towns.



Finally we headed for Zaanse Schans. We had lunch first at D’Vijf Broers, we all had ham and cheese toasties with some wine which was delicious. We then headed into Zaanse Schans to take photos of all the windmills. We saw how the cheese was made and watched a clog making demonstration.



All in all it was a terrific day, and would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to do without a car and driver. I could not imagine how long it would take to visit all those towns by bus!



We spent our last evening in Amsterdam at a restaurant I had read about here on Tripadvisor – De Belhamel. It was a fair walk from Banks Mansion so we caught a taxi. The restaurant was lovely and I ate Dutch lamb cutlets followed by pear tarte tatin. The bill for both of us with wine came to €156 so a bit more expensive than the other restaurants we had eaten at, but worth every euro. We finished the evening with a final night walk around the Herengracht canal near our hotel.





We loved our short break in Amsterdam and hope to one day be able to come back for a few more days.

---