Holland's wooden shoes and windmills

On Saturday, Oct. 31, Dad took off work so we could spend a day together. We all like when he does that. :) Dad and Mom decided that we would go to a place where they do wooden shoe making demonstrations. We parked in the Zaans Schans museum parking lot area. We did not go in the actual museum building instead we went to the recreated Dutch village. When we got to the shoe building they had big yellow shoes that you can step into so you can get your picture taken.

When we walked into the building there were wooden shoes everywhere! There were clogs that were ice skates, roller skates, carved wooden clogs, painted clogs, and there is also instruments made in the shape of a clog. The reason I call them clogs is because that is what they call them over here.

When the demonstration started there were a lot of people that gathered around. They guy who was doing it did really well in my opinion. We watched 3 demonstrations and the first was the best. The guys who did the second and third time did it too fast, so the finished shoe did not get as nice as the first demonstrator's shoe. Back when the Hollanders started making wooden shoes they did it by hand. That took 2-3 hours per shoe. Now they can do it in less than 5 minutes!! It is all done by machines now. If you can't believe that it is done in less than 5 mins you have to fly to Holland to see it done! :) When he was finished cutting and shaping, the guy said, "Now this wood is still very wet." Then he blew into the shoe and a lot of water came out.

When he was done with his demonstration we could then look around the little shop that they had there. There was one whole wall of just wooden shoes for sale. There were shoes of all sizes! There were shoe banks, necklaces, post cards, slippers that look wooden shoes, bottle openers, key chain bobs, wooden flowers, flower shaped bottle openers, bells with windmills painted on them, pot holders with shoes and windmills on them, pencils with shoes on the ends instead of erasers, and lots more! Mom bought a necklace with tiny ceramic shoes on it, Landon bought a shoe bank, Jack bought a pair of mini wooden shoes for Briana as a birthday present. Dad and I did not buy anything. :)

The shoe factory is included in a little town of houses that they rebuilt to look as it did before the town was abandoned and obliterated by time. They moved windmills across the river just to have there to look at, some were built new. After the shoe place we walked into a couple stores, and to a windmill. The windmills that they have there are still working. One of them is working on cutting logs. The windmills you have to pay to get in and we did not know that until later and we got in free. How we did that was, there was a long line of people waiting to get in and we just stood with them not knowing anything, and when they walked in we walked in too! So we just got in free! Another windmill is grinding cinnamon. Some are not doing anything at all, I think, but just going around and around. :)

At the end of the town there was a little building where a lady was making things out of pewter. It was really neat how she did it. She had a pot of molten pewter at about 350 degrees Celcius! It looked like mercury. She has been doing it for 30 years! We walked around a little more and then we left. But we had a great day there! By the way, we did not do the things in the order that I wrote them. :)