Here is one of the famous Dutch bike parkades, housing some 5000 bikes. There are no markers of sections within the parkade, so in order to be able to find their bikes among the crowds many Dutch decorate theirs with crazy colours or decorations.

After Zaanse Schans we went on a canal tour of Amsterdam. It was quite amazing to see the contrasts of modernity and the Old World. You'd see huge parcades full of bikes, literally thousands of them, sandwiched between buildings that dated back to 1650.

According to the tour, this is the famous Ann Frank House. It was in this house that she and the others hide for so many months during World War II, and where she wrote her now famous journals.

On friday the Sept. 8th we took a group trip to Zaanse Schans, an original, working 16th century Dutch village. The buildings there are all originals that have been restored and transfered to this particular area. These three windmills have been brought in from various points along the Netherlands and are currently being used to make peanut and canola oil.