Today was a great day! (1_ After morning fog, it was clear, blue skies and sunshine, (2) we got to cruise not once but twice today, and (3) our stop in Kinderdijk - a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to 19 windmills. And, as an added bonus, instead of doing the traditional walking tour we took a barge tour of the windmills. Just a GREAT day......
The day began with fog thick as pea soup as we cruised from the moment we got up....which for the first time of this adventure, we didn't have a morning excursion, so we both didn't get up until about 8 am - highly unusual for me. We enjoyed the "scenic sailing" through breakfast and then around 10 am it began to break and the sun came out.
Sailing down the Rhine River towards Kinderdijk
As we sailed we were in the lounge where we heard the captain give a presentation about how the ship operates and then the program director gave a presentation about Viking itineraries. She reminded us of an opportunity that I had forgotten about. ONLY onboard a river ship, you can purchase a Viking voucher for $100 and it is immediately worth $200 towards a future sailing. AND you can transfer them AND they never expire. So, Kim and I both get one of these....add in our bonus/discount as past guests of $200 each and our next booking is immediately reduced by $800 :) We arrived at Kinderdijk a little after 1 pm and at 1:15 pm they called for our group, the "Barge Sailing to the Windmills" excursion. Not too many years ago Viking purchased two, one-hundred plus year-old barges. They re-fitted them and now a group of around 25 guests can board the barge (electric powered) and sail up the canal to the windmills far away from the visitor's center.
One thing that was really cool about the windmills is that in the majority of them, a miller STILL lives there and operates the mill! One of the windmills pictured below was built around 1600 and has had the same family (the Hook family) living there for eleven generations....wow.
We arrived at "our windmill" where we were greeted by the miller (complete with his wooden shoes, which he explained he and his family where every day, all day!). He demonstrated how MANUALLY he can turn the entire top of the windmill to get the full impact of the sail; how the waterwheel works and how as a side business they catch fish & eels in the water that's being pumped into the canal. Then he took us inside the windmill to see how the family used to live inside the windmill. He's one of the farmers that now has a cottage outside & separate from the windmill for more room - though it is quite small.
We then boarded the barge for the return trip to the visitor center. All the while basking in the warm sun and bright blue skies. The windmills were really, REALLY cool to look at!
Once we returned to the ship we set sail for Rotterdam, about an hour and change upstream. We needed to be there to pick up an excursion group that had left from Kinderdijk and finished here. While we were in town there was a short excursion to walk around the city. In the "Port Talk" the previous night they'd shown slides of the highlights of this walk and one of the stops was to see some unique "cubic homes." Kim, Claudia, and another wife we met all said they'd like to see that, but didn't want to pay the $75 to go on an organized tour, so the three of them set out on their own. The best "story" of their adventure was that there was no story (LOL). Unlike our adventure trying to find our way around Amsterdam the three gals had no problem finding the unique structures and making it back in time for Happy Hour and the Port Talk. Good job ladies!
Tomorrow we travel to Antwerp, Belgium and a morning excursion through the Old Town, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.
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