3. The Trip to Benelux

Today's day was filled with tasting and exploring the local culture.

Right after breakfast, we set off to Zaandam, where one of the largest tourist attractions in the whole Netherlands is located. This is the kind of open-air museum, Zaanse Schans, where we admired windmills, saw the production of wooden shoes thanks to a pleasant Czech tour guide, and, last but not least, tasted countless kinds of cheese. Everyone found their favorite; for some, it was beer cheese, others enjoyed it with garlic, chili, or pesto, and we even tried cheese with lavender.

Next, we traveled to the fortified town of Naarden, where we had only a short stop for lunch, after which we indulged in tasting traditional Dutch stroopwafels. After that, we went to see the place where Jan Amos Komenský was buried.

Now we were looking forward to the much-anticipated Amsterdam. Considering that we wanted to walk around even during the night, we arranged accommodation right in the city for tonight. Before the evening walk, most of us went for a pleasant five-kilometer run through the streets of this city. From the accommodation, we headed to the metro, had a couple of beers along the way, and enjoyed a perfect kebab for dinner before setting off on the metro towards the city center. As soon as we emerged from the metro, we headed to a famous café to buy and test the local herbs, which for some of us clouded perception to the point that we had to sit for a while before we could continue exploring the wild streets of the Venice of the North. When we reached the district famous for its red curtains and red-lit shop windows, we carefully peered into each of them and assessed what we had just seen. After walking through several of these alleys, we stopped to satisfy our hunger and, feeling tired, headed back to the room.