Zaandam is worth a day's visit - the windmills operating along the river are some of the last left from the Dutch medieval period when there were nearly 1,000 operating to grind corn, process grains & other early industrial production. We visited there for a day a couple of years ago & enjoyed it a lot.
As for cellphones, you can lease one & then you'll buy minutes to put onto the phone. Expensive but good to have. The other option is an international sat phone but that's expensive, too.
To call back to North America, I bought a Go Bananas phone card at a local kiosk for 10 or 20 euros & used a land line. Punch in the code on the back of the card then the international number. You can get over 1000 minutes for 20 euros. I'm not sure the costs for calling the UK (are you there or in
Canada?) but it shouldn't be much different.
I gave up on the cellphone calls because the euros got eaten rapidly with international calls. And I paid for the minutes whether I called out or my family called me.
__________________
centexwoody
They're beautiful handsome machines that translate energy into joy.