Amsterdam, Netherlands III: Zaanse Schans

When I first heard the name of this place, I thought the two words were the same haha. Go on, try pronouncing it! Zaanse Schans is quite small, there are a few restaurants, cheese museums (VERY YUMMY CHEESE), windmill museums, etc. Half a day here would be sufficient.

I went there with two other Singaporeans. They were on the same bus from London but I didn't know they were from Singapore. They saw me at breakfast in the hostel and approached me to say hi. :)

We had a lovely walk around the place on a pretty gloomy day. The fields of tulip I had been hoping to see were replaced by grass and wild flowers. But I must say, the wild flowers were really pretty! There were different species and I think if you randomly grabbed a bunch and bundled them up, they would make a lovely bouquet to decorate your house with. Hilariously, J said "Only we find this pretty. This is weed to them!" Quite true haha.

Then my friends decided to take a puff so I wandered off. I sat on a log and enjoyed the peaceful and beautiful view, it was really calming for the soul. Then I decided to have a little lie down and as I watched the clouds drift past and felt the gentle caress of the wind, I drifted off to sleep. Yes.. I fell asleep on a log.. When I woke up, I saw my friends approaching me anxiously. They thought that I was offended by them for taking a puff or I got lost or something bad happened.. when in fact, I merely fell asleep on a log 10 steps away from the bush where they were sitting at. :p

How to get there?
Take a train to railway station Koog-Zaandijk which is four stops from Amsterdam Central Station and takes about 20 minutes. From there, you need to walk around 10 minutes through the village of Zaandijk to get to the windmills (lots of signs pointing you in the right direction, don't worry).

Then I rushed back to the hostel after dinner and a stopover at I AMSTERDAM. The metro was down so I had to take a bus to Amstel station where the coach station was. I didn't have small change with me but luckily I met two lovely girls who were going to Amstel station as well (to take the same coach haha) and one of them gave me her coins to pay for the bus fare. Even though it wasn't much but it was so incredibly sweet of her! Or else I would have been stuck at the bus stop and missed my coach or something. They were from Finland and Berlin and I had a nice chat with them on the way. Found out that they didn't get the chance to try stroopwaffles, so I gave them the pack I bought. They kept saying that it's fine but I insisted. It's really awesome to meet kind hearted people during your travels, they just make your days so much better. :)