Today we arrived in Kinderdijk which is the only place in the Netherlands where they actually have working windmills. Kinderdijk is 10 feet below sea level and in order to keep the land dry and safe for people to live on they have to pump the water into reservoirs which then eventually empties into the Rhine River where the river is at a lower level than their dikes (dijk).
This is a map of the area and all the area on the right hand side of the map will drain water from rain right down to Kinderdijk in the area where the guide’s hand is pointing out. They built 19 windmills in order to pump the water into the reservoir to keep land dry and safe for people to live on. Nowadays, they have big turbines which of course pumps more cubic meters of water in a minute than the windmills do but in the early 1500-1600’s, it all drained by the windmills who had millers living in the windmills with their families.
This shows the windmills with the canal of water in the dikes and the reservoir is on the other side of this canal. It really fascinates me how they figured all of this out so many years ago.
This is the modern version of the windmills today!!! Big turbines pump the water at 100 times the rate of the windmills!
This is a picture of a miller and his family of 13 children. Unfortunately the mother had a terrible accident when she was trying to save one of her children from being too close to the windmill arm and she ended up being hit by it which killed her at the age of 42; so the miller was left without his wife raising 13 children on his own. It is amazing how they lived in a windmill with that many children!
This was a living room kitchen of the windmill which was the only warm room in the entire house. The master bedroom is the back of this room. Can you imagine crowding 13 children into this room every day!
This was the master bed and there was a place for the baby to sleep just above the bottom of the bed and the potty (bathroom) for them was at the foot of the bed.
This is the wheel that that turns to move the water. See the staircase in the distance. You had to walk up these narrow stairs for every level of the windmill. I wonder how many times their children would fall down the many steps!
This shows the back of the windmill and this is how the miller would turn the top part of the windmill so that it could catch the direction of the wind. I didn’t even know they could actually turn it at all!
Yes, leave it up to me find someone walking their dog!
From Kinderdjik, we were bussed to Delft and visited the Delft pottery factory where they make the blue and white pottery, all hand-painted.
This is one of the master painters. You see the vases in the front part of the picture; they start with the one on the left and after going through the different processes of being in the ovens to the end product after painting.
After visiting the factory, we were then taken on a walking tour of the city of Delft. This piece cost 13,000 Euros.
The market square of Delft.
It was certainly a pretty little town.
Of course, another “Cheese” store!!
We then had the Captain’s Farewell dinner last night having Chateaubrand for supper. We met another couple over the last few days from the Toronto area and we had supper together last night. It was quite a nice evening. Today we have another full day of adventures, a walking tour of Edam and Volendam in the morning, a cycling tour of Hoorn this afternoon. Tonight for supper they are taking us into Oosterkerk for a typical Dutch Dinner with the locals. As our cruise director would say “chow for now”!
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