Once we had registered our destination with the baggage people we were off by train to a small city called Alkmaar. Home of the largest cheese market in the Netherlands, Alkmaar was quite cute, and the Amrath Hotel thankfully was ready for us when we arrived. Seeing the cheese market in action on Friday morning was interesting, and we began to gain an understanding of just how much people in the Netherlands love cheese. Apparently they export tons of it, but watching it all roll by was cool. Giant wheels of Edam cheese were visible everywhere, and if we had some way to store it, I’m guessing we would have bought one of the smaller wheels. No refrigerator in the future however made us content to visit the cheese museum and munch on smaller samples of the cheeses, which were made from cow’s milk and goat’s milk and sometimes both milks with herbs or seeds.