Kinderdijk

Kinderdijk

The weather today was awful. We woke up to cold, rain, and gusty winds. We couldn’t let the weather dictate our plans though, so we bundled up and hopped in the car to drive over to Kinderdijk. This area is famous for their windmills, and there are the most windmills in any one area there at a preserved heritage site. The windmills are huge and beautiful. I didn’t know it until now, but they Dutch families actually lived in them as well. The position of the windmill arms was also used to signify things such as holidays/family celebrations, periods of mourning, etc… Normally you can ride a small boat down the canal for better views of the windmills, but the boat was not running when we got there because of the miserable weather. So we had to walk path to get our views and pictures. I was surprised how many other crazy people were out there walking the path and braving the wind and rain to see them as well. Tour busses of people were there and all out walking.

Backing up a little bit, on the way to the windmills the GPS has us driving all over and had us take a ferry across the road. Don't you just love it when your GPS says "turn right, then board ferry." What the hell? A little advance notice would be nice, turning right and seeing water right in front of you is a little late to be telling us to board the ferry. Anyway...while waiting we took video of Colin.



After getting back in the car and warming up we drove over to the beach to see the North Sea. I hopped out long enough to snap a picture, but it was even windier at the beach so I wasn’t trying to spend much time there. Later that evening we had dinner at a seafood restaurant on the beach. We had great views of the waves crashing on the beach and the food was awesome. Shelby had a huge sole that took up the entire plate and fell off the bones. I had prawns that were as big as my hand and Colin cleaned his plate of fish. Colin was fascinated with the lobsters in the tank at the restaurant and had to keep going over to check on them and watch.