Day 2 - Heading Down River, The Windmills Are Turning

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We woke this morning to find the ship has left Amsterdam and we are about to dock in Kinderdijk. We both had a great nights sleep and have recovered from any jet lag. We are ready to take on the world or at least the Netherlands and begin our vacation in earnest. After a quick breakfast, we were ready to begin our walking tour of the Kinderdijk windmills at 8:30.

Our local tour guide Ben is a volunteer for a windmill preservation group, and is very knowledgeable about these water pump type windmills. There are other windmills in eastern Netherlands that are used as actual mills to mill grain, but these windmills in Kinderdijk are water pumping windmills used to reclaim land that is below sea level since about 40 percent of the Netherlands and 100 percent of the regions North and South Holland are below sea level.

Since about the 14^th century, the Netherlands have been trying to reclaim land through a series of dikes and gates. Since the local rivers are near the ocean, they are tidal, where the water level rises and falls with the tides. Originally, the land to be reclaimed was surrounded by dikes, with a gate that would be opened at low tide to drain water from the dike basin, and then closed to prevent the high tide from flooding the basin. By 1738, a 9-mile canal had been dug by hand, and a series of windmill pumps were built to pump water out of the lower basin up a distance of 1.5 meters and into the river. This worked well, and a second 2.5 mile canal was built and the water from the lower basin was pumped up the 1.5 meters to the upper basin, and another series of windmill pumps were built to pump the water up a distance of 1.5 meters from the upper basin to the river.

This worked well until the early 19^th century when the windmill pumps were replaced with steam driven mechanical pumps, and eventually in the early 20^th century the steam engines were replaced with electric engines. The electric engine pumps are still preserved in one of the pump buildings. In modern times, the electric pumps were replaced with modern diesel pumps that can raise the water level 4 meters directly without the need of the lower and upper basins, and the windmills have been preserved as a UNESCO Heritage Site.

We were also given a chance to tour an actual windmill and climb inside most of the way up to the top. There are some living quarters inside the windmill itself, as someone must be inside the windmill operating it whenever it is actually spinning. The blades themselves have an attachable cloth sail to increase the blade area so that the windmills can operate in both low wind and higher wind conditions. Sails can be attached fully, partially, or not at all in various wind conditions. Outside, at the back of the windmill is a huge wheel called the brake that can be turned to apply pressure to the upper gear with a series of wood blocks to slow and eventually stop the blades if they are rotating too fast, or if maintenance is needed.

Needless to say, the engineer in me was fascinated by both the technical aspects of the windmill itself and the process of water management in the Netherlands. We had seen a similar windmill, except it was used for milling grain, in Holland, MI while on our motorcycle trip in 2017. The one in Holland, MI was an actual 18th century windmill, purchased in the Netherlands, disassembled and ship to Holland, MI as a tourist attraction in the 1960’s.

The town of Kinderdijk, which means Child’s Dike, supposedly gets its name from a legend of a basket floating in the river, with a cat standing on the basket moving back and forth to keep it from flipping over and sinking. When the basket and the cat were retrieved, inside the basket was discovered an infant, that the cat had prevented from drowning. While a heartwarming origin legend, Ben was quick to point out, that the cat’s movement was as much a method of self-preservation as child rescue, and that the same legend is supposed to have occurred in several other local cities at about the same time. But, it IS a nice story!

After the walking tour of Kinderdijk Windmills, it was time to do a little souvenir shopping where we scored our first t-shirts of the trip, and we were back on the boat by 10:30. The rest of the day was spent in quiet relaxation. We did manage to enjoy lunch and afternoon tea in the lounge, met a few more interesting people, a New Zealand couple at lunch who were great, and Steve and Jill, an anesthesiologist and his nurse wife from Indiana, who had not yet retired and seemed a little stressed.

We also had our mandatory fire drill and muster, managed to complete our 10,000 steps on the sundeck walking track, and attend a briefing on upcoming shore excursions. There’s not a lot of night life on the boat except for drinking and maybe a little dancing at the bar. Also, the bar doesn’t have a closing time, it basically stays open until the last customer heads off to bed.

Dinner tonight was crab cakes, chateau-briand, and lava cake with vanilla ice cream – all were delicious! Unfortunately, the ship seems to have run out of diet coke, hopefully they will replenish stock soon. We also sat at a table of 8, so we were with 2 other couples and a couple of singles. The 2 of the guys and one of the wives were doctors – this ship seems to be full of doctors. But the 2 guy doctors were busy talking doctor stuff and boring the rest of us. We ended up talking to the doctor wife and her cousin, both Puerto-Rican women and they were great fun! The other single guy was a retired electrical engineer from Uxbridge, MA and I’m sure would have been interesting to talk to, but he was seated with the boring doctors between him and us, so he couldn’t join our conversation. I’m sure we’ll get to talk to him later on the cruise. Tonight we continue our journey into Germany, with our first stop tomorrow in Cologne. We will be in Cologne all day tomorrow, and our excursion will be over in the morning, so we should have time to do some exploring!

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