Windmills at the Kinderdijk

Besides wooden shoes and tulips, the image that most often comes to mind when people think of the Netherlands is windmills of course. Well today I sure got a dosage of those! As part of a Dutch culture assignment, my partner Melissa and I had to choose a famous landmark or museum to present about. After looking on the UN world heritage site web page, we decided to head out to the Kinderdijk where 19 historical windmills are located.

Melissa and I took a train to Utrecht where we boarded a regional bus that brought us to this small town. The bus ride was over an hour and a half long but the sky was blue and the fields were green so it was a beautiful sightseeing ride. We were basically on a road that wound with the river so it was not the most stomach friendly ride. Besides our nationality Melissa and I also share a similar car sickness problem... augh. We were able to reach our destination without any messy problems and right before our eyes was the beautiful sights of these windmills. As the historical plaques explained, these windmills were built throughout the mid-1700s as a way of reclaiming the land. Eight of the windmills were the largest in the world!

For our project, we were able to film some educational yet entertaining bits for the presentation. The blue sky just made everything seem so much more cheery and spectacular. A couple of the windmills were actually turning which was more than we expected because of the off-season. In April, people can take a little boat cruise to view the windmills and visit the inside of one of them. From our view, it looked like people actually still lived in some of the windmills. There were lawn chairs set up, knick-knacks in the windows and people coming in and out of them. I started to think what a sweet life that would be to just chill out in a windmill. Even though we had to visit this site in the off-season, we still had a memorable experience.

After our filming and picture-taking walk, we entered a nearby souvenir shop/restaurant where we had some delicious pancakes and conversation. Melissa goes to the business school at York university and we had a great time getting to know each other better. We've already decided that next fall, we will have to visit each other in our respective university towns.

So all in all it was a very productive day. Worked on a project and checked out another possible destination for my parents to visit in May.