The Windmills of Kinderdijk

A river cruise along the Rhine River, from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Basel in Switzerland, passes through beautiful scenery and stops in fascinating places.   Over the next weeks I will write about some of those stops, beginning today with one of my favorites – Kinderdijk.

The Viking Baldur sailed out of Amsterdam at 11 pm on day one of the cruise and arrived in Kinderdijk the next morning just after breakfast.  It was an easy walk from the spot where the boat docked to this unique UNESCO Heritage site, famous for its 19 historic windmills.

 Any visit to Kinderdijk begins with the story related to its name which means “Children’s Dike” in Dutch.  The story goes something like this – way back in the year 1421 a huge flood brought destruction and many deaths to the area.  A little boy went to check the dike (not the famous Hans Brinker but a different boy altogether).  The boy found a cat atop a cradle floating in the flood waters.  Inside the cradle was a baby girl.  And so, we have the name Children’s Dike.   Another version of the story pre-dates the flood and is a bit more specific.  The baby was named Honigje. She had been cared for by a midwife and her cat named Dubbeltje. It was this cat who saved the baby from flood waters.  The legend was explained in the Viking Daily, an on-board newsletter provided each day with tidbits of information about the various stops along the cruise.

Viewing the windmills from a small canal boat was an optional excursion at this stop.

The local tour guide for our morning at Kinderdijk was a very tall Dutch gentleman who had grown up in the area.  If you’ve never experienced Dutch humor and frankness, then I will simply say that it is an added bonus during the visit.  We all had a laugh when he warned us about not stepping in goose droppings by saying “watch out, there’s a lot of goose sh*t around”.  Oh, those plain-spoken Dutch! We tried not to laugh, really we did, but it was impossible!

 The visit began in the gift shop where a model of the area provided an explanation of how the windmills worked together to pump water from the below-sea-level lands up to the drainage canals.  This was also made clear by the fact that our ship, which was docked on the river, sat well above the lower lands of Kinderdijk.   Attached to the gift shop building was an area with old tools along with huge mechanical equipment – pumps that later were added to make the process of moving water much more efficient that doing so with the windmills alone.  Of course there were also souvenirs to purchase.

 A small educational building provided a chance to listen as our guide demonstrated the wooden structures used in the oldest windmills.

At Kinderdijk the windmills date back to the 1700’s, among the oldest in the Netherlands.  Our guide also discussed how the windmills work and the changes that occurred over time as construction changed from wood to iron. This brief introduction made the next stop, a visit to the interior of a windmill, much more valuable.

The windmills at Kinderdijk functioned to keep the land from being submerged. They also provided a home for the keeper of the windmill and his family.

The day of our visit was quite cold and windy. Despite that, the small home inside the windmill was cozy.  The table sat beside a pretty window, the wood stove stood ready to cook a meal, and the china cabinet was full of pretty painted pieces.  The bed, tucked inside an alcove in the single main room of the home, looked warm and inviting.  There is something intriguing about the glimpse into a very different way of life that a visit to a furnished home provides.  

 The more adventurous in our group climbed the ladder into the upper workings of the windmill while some of us kept our feet on the ground exploring the big wooden wheels that drove the windmills and seeing the sails (blades) of the windmill from below.  

An interesting tidbit – the position of the sails also served to send messages, including warnings of imminent visits from Nazis during World War II. 

This early spring cruise was a bit too early to see the famous Dutch tulips of the area.  Instead, there were lovely yellow daffodils in bloom, tall graceful grasses, budding trees and some pretty dramatic skies. 

 The windmills of Kinderdijk made for a perfect first stop on this week-long cruise.  Coming up, stops along the Rhine in Germany and France.

Amsterdam in Early Spring

Put together two words - Amsterdam and spring – and most of us immediately conjure up images of colorful tulips in bloom.   But what happens when you arrive in early spring after a period of unusually cold, rainy, windy weather in the Netherlands?  Well, what happens is that the tulip fields are not yet in bloom and the only tulips to be seen are cut stems in the marketplace and shops, or tulips planted in a protected pots. 

One sure place to find tulips in bloom is at Amsterdam’s Tulip Museum. The shop full of flowers, bulbs, and tulip themed merchandise is a great place to browse or pick up beautiful souvenirs.

One of the many houseboats that can be found along Amsterdam’s canals.

 If seeing tulips is the main reason for a trip, then best not to plan a late March arrival.  Locals told me the blooms would appear in about three weeks, which meant not until mid-April.   But, the first rule of travel is flexibility and not letting any single thing determine the success of a trip.  Tulips in bloom or not, Amsterdam is a fabulous city.

 My early spring visit was still full of color.  The long stems of tulip buds in the market provided a hint of the color to come. 

New green leaves and delicate pink flowers were emerging on trees. Tiny purple flowers peaked up in planting beds and a spectrum of greens spilled out of the flower pots on the steps leading up to those tall, narrow Dutch houses.

The palest of pink flowers in bloom on this tree just outside of Vondelpark in Amsterdam.

 And then there were the spring time yellows.  Forsythia were in bloom throughout Amsterdam in late March, an especially welcome sight on a cold misty morning in Vondelpark.

And all those daffodils!  Bright sunny yellow ones popping up all over town- in planting beds and in beautiful Vondelpark.   

Does anything say spring better than daffodils?

An early morning walk through the park presented a perfect sense of early spring in Amsterdam.   

 One of these years I will return later in spring to see the fields of tulips in bloom, but this year I was quite content to see the colors of early spring in Amsterdam.