Photos From Holland

This was my first trip to Europe, and since my husband is from Dutch parents, we went to Holland! Here is a photo taken in Amsterdam...a fascinating city!

Another photo taken in Amsterdam:

Of course the typical architecture one would expect to see in Amsterdam:

Another shot along one of the many canals. We took a canal tour in one of the tourboats. The city gets its name from the river Amstel, on which it was originally built around.

Here was my very first encounter with a real windmill! I wanted to go in, but this one has been renovated and made into a private home.

Here was another windmill that I got to go in! It's one of the restored windmills (originally built in the 16-1700s) that is at Zaanse Schans. The windmills were moved from various locations in order to preserve them and educate people about them. Zaanse Schans is something like "Black Creek Pioneer Village" where they preserve a little bit of the past and show you how things were once done in the "old" days.

This one here is called "De Kat", for reasons I couldn't discover, but it's used as a dye mill. Its powerful mill wheels grind pigments.
I took a lot of photos of the inside of it!


This is a little "tourist" windmill at the gardens of the Keukenhof. I went inside it too, but its mill wheels etc. have been removed and wider staircases have been put in.

But from it I could see this beautiful view:

The Keukenhof has thousands of beautiful gardens! I had the chance to photograph many different flowers. My favorites are Daffodils.



Of course I had to have the typical tourist photo taken of myself sitting in a giant wooden shoe!