Tourist

I lived almost 40 years in the Netherlands and managed to avoid the windmills. But now that I’m basically a tourist I can finally surrender.

I went to Kinderdijk with the Fast Ferry, a boat that goes between Rotterdam and Dordrecht, mainly to avoid the traffic jams for commuters. In the rush hour it is faster to go by boat than by car, even over twenty kilometre. We, my friend Peter and his daughter Madelief, went after the rush hour so we had the boat almost to ourselves. We had our bikes with us (you can take them with you for free) and after we got of at Kinderdijk we rode towards the windmills. There are 19 of them, very close together and originally used to pump the water from the lower ‘polder’ to the canal that’s about 5 meters higher. And even the canal is just marginally above sea level. We made a rather long bike ride, especially because the first 10 kilometres was along with the wind and after that we had to go 10 km against the wind to return. And there was a lot of wind. But all in all a very nice day, too bad that Alison isn’t in the Netherlands yet, but still in Canada. She’ll arrive coming Friday, but I had bought my ticket last year already and couldn’t change the date. Ah well, it’s a good way for me to have my jetlag in private, without bothering her with my bad temper and overall grumpiness.