Sock's in Holland

After a 10-hour drive from Paris, France, we arrived in the Netherlands, on Wednesday the 16^th of October. For the next 2 days we would be exploring the city of Amsterdam, one of the most popular cities in Holland. The Netherlands are known for their tulips, windmills, clogs and cheese. We explored these areas and more, and had very adventurous 2 days here.

One of our first stops in the Netherlands was a cheese factory. The factory was on a farm and a long time ago, the milk to make the cheese would have been from the animals on the farm. Now a days the operation is so big, that the animals cannot produce enough milk to supply the factory.  It now comes from other farms around it. There was a lady who worked in the factory and told us the steps of how the cheese was made. The first step to making cheese is bringing the milk to the right temperature. After the desired temperature is achieved, an ingredient called rennet is added to the milk. The rennet creates little curds of cheese that separate from the milky water. Sometimes you can just buy cheese curds at the grocery store. I have had them before and they are good! After this, the milky water is drained off and the curds are put into a press for a few hours. After this stage is complete, the now solid cheese blocks are put into a bath of water and salt, which gives them their main flavour. The cheese is then coated in wax and left to sit on a shelf. Once the cheese has been sitting on the shelf for the desired time, the cheese is then packaged and sent to grocery stores in bulk. At the end of the process, for every 10 pounds of milk used; only 1 pound of cheese is made.

 

Ally and Meg with one of the factory workers. 

Ally beside the big milk container. 

My Family outside of the cheese factory.

Quiz Question!

What kind of milk is cheese made of?

      A)       Cow’s milk

            B)           Sheep’s milk

      C)  Goat’s milk

For answer look and the end of the blog.

Another interesting place that we visited, was a clog factory. Clogs are wooden shoes that people from the Netherlands used to wear all the time. You may have seen them before; they are wooden and kind of look like the genie’s shoes from Aladdin. They are pretty popular over here, and in our travels throughout our stay in Holland; we saw many clog factories. One in particular had clogs hanging from the ceiling!  It was very neat, we even found a pair of clogs that would have fit my paws!

 

Look at all the clog's on the roof!

Meg and Ally in a big plastic clog!

Apparently if you come to the Netherlands in the summer there are rows upon rows of tulips. Sadly, since we visited here in the middle of October the tulips were not in bloom. Ally said she saw lots of pictures that showed a windmill with many different coloured rows of tulips in front of it. Most people have also told us, that there were many windmills in the Netherlands. We did not see many though, as we were in the city most of the time, but we did see a few.

One of the main reasons we wanted to visit the Netherlands, was to see the city of Amsterdam. We spent most of our time wandering around the little shops and looking at the little canals, which can be seen from almost every turn. There are also tons of cheese shops all along the streets. We liked visiting them and trying free samples of cheese and a cookie called a Dutch biscuit. We were also surprised at how many bikes there were. There were almost 15 bikes for every car we saw, which is very different from in Canada.

 

The canals 

The biggest french fries I have ever seen!

Ally getting food  from a vending machine! Who would have thought there would be a hambuger vending machine!

At the end of our trip, we were very glad we ended up spending a few days in the Netherlands. We learned lots of new things that we did not know before and had lots of fun visiting the city of Amsterdam.

Quiz Question Answer

Surprisingly, cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s milk can be used in the process of making cheese.