Thursday, April 24, 2025

Tourists today

Today we had a private driver take us out to all the typical tourist must do things. The day included windmills, clog making, cheese making and then an old fisherman village, Volderdam.
Initially Mike was thinking we would sort of skip the clog making part - and that turned out to be the most fun!
We thought the cheese making and tasting would be the best part, but the tasting room was packed with large groups of tour buses. Our guide explained that last year he convinced the cheese maker to open his unused restaurant area for more private tasting like we would have preferred- apparently they tried it and found it to be too much of a bother so they stopped.
But the cow part of the day was interesting- it is all completely automated with machines for everything!







Obligatory windmill photos.



Clog making demonstration 



They even made wooden shoes for horses!





Automated milking machine - cows wear a collar and machine knows their name and everything about them and if they are not supposed to be in yet - sorry, no treats and gate opens and out they go again.

Even a machine for dropping fresh straw.


And my favorite since I love my robotic vacuum and mop; this is a robot that cleans the whole area up.


But look at this cute cow - who was not supposed to be in for milking - she says she would rather be at Ann and Jack’s farm instead of with robots!



This was the best part of the cheese making demo because there were no people - just us. Then when we walked into the tasting and sales room we were shocked.





We stopped at a restaurant famous for its smoked eel. Yes! We tried it! It was good and the folks who run the place were super friendly and we got the behind the scenes tour of them skinning and gutting the eel and how the smoking is still all done by hand.





And what kind of day would it be if we didn’t end it with more pancakes! They are delicious and addictive.

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