We started the day with a visit to the Gassan Diamond factory. I’d always imagined that “cutting” diamonds involved some sort of blade but it turns out that it is mostly grinding and polishing rather than cutting.

Yeah, there’s a diamond in that clamp somewhere. The whole diamond market is a scam, with a cartel of suppliers maintaining artificially high prices, but, hey, shiny!

Our tour guide seemed intent on getting through the presentation as fast as possible, but he did have the endearing mannerism of referring to all the tens of thousands of euros worth of jewelry he was showing us as bling-bling.

From there we had lunch in a neighborhood cafe and headed for the maritime museum, or as the Dutch say, Scheepvaartmuseum. I’m not sure how his is pronounced, but Paula and I settled on Sheep Fart Museum.

As you can see they have a tall ship. Actually it’s a replica of a Dutch East Indiaman, lacking a lot of spars, rigging, and stuff that would actually make the ship work, but enough to get an idea maritime life in the age of sail.

While English jacks tars subsisted on ship’s biscuit and salt beef, the Dutch sailers got ship’s biscuit and cheese, while the officers feasted on plastic chicken.

I don’t believe the virtual reality tour around 17th century Amsterdam was part of the original equipment for an East Indiaman, but we enjoyed it anyhow.

They also have a coal fired steam launch…

… and the glop-intensive Dutch Royal Barge.

Much of the rest of the museum was not very photogenic because of the dramatic lighting.

Somewhere in that case there are some interesting navigational instruments, but the description in grey paint on a badly lit see through surface made it hard to work out what they are.

There is one nice little canal boat, designed to be towed along the Dutch inland waterways, or sailed if you got lucky with the wind.

There’s also a nice collection of figureheads and other ships’ art.

On the way home we met a dinosaur in the park.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention. In the gift shop of the diamond factory they had a Dead Chicken Girl blue china plate, and this time they haven’t edited out the dead chicken.