We have planned to take the 9:08 train to Rotterdam Central. We try to buy our tickets at the machines, but our card is rejected because American Credit card companies still require a signature not a pin. After buying them from the ticket lady, our train arrives on the platform at the same time as we do. There are seats four across from each other, which means we don't have to lift our bags into the overhead bin. On this train they would fit, but they wouldn't fit on all trains and you never know.
After arriving in Rotterdam and exiting the train station, Pat spots Tram 23 and says, that's our tram, but this one is going to Marconipein and we want one heading the other way to Beverdale. We got on going the wrong way, jump out at first stop and over the tracks and in two minutes we are going the right direction and we arrive at our hotel.
Checked into our room. First impression looking in the door is, it's small. But, it's nicely themed to travel.
The desk is so cool, like a steamer trunk, the drawers are padded inside on the bottom and the sides. There's a nice hardbound book that tells about Holland American Cruise Lines and there's the usual coffee and tea. There's an aluminum steamer trunk-looking thing for a night stand and on it were a lot of magazines.
The bathroom is huge compared to the room. It's almost as big. Double modern sinks, old fashion tub. Nice amenities: soft hand soap, bar soap, body wash, shampoo, and bath salts. Actual bath salts. And wash clothes. Ya!!!
On to lunch. The place Pat had picked out isn't open, so we head to Subway because we want something fast.
We got up earlier than we had scheduled because we knew we needed more time at the windmills, so we wanted to catch the earliest bus we could this morning. At 11am we start walking toward the tram stop. We take the first tram to the Akaroord stop.
The next bus on our plan was a 45 min wait, which would lose us all the time we gained getting up early this morning. So we looked at the schedules at the bus stop and found another bus going to the windmills and only had to wait 12 minutes. All this took a walk, a tram, and a bus and about 100 minutes travel time.
The Kinderdijk Windmills were awesome. There were 19 windmills and you could see them all from some places. We bought a ticket to tour the museum and the two windmills you can go in. (You can only go inside two, the others are private).
First we toured the museum; really it was only a movie and a gift shop in the old power plant. The movie told the story of the Kinderdijk Windmills. They still help pump the water out of the fields. Not too much, not too little. You have to know the weather and how much water should be removed. It's a job of constant change; like the weather.
The first Windmill was about a third of a mile walk. We walked across the bridge over the canal and started exploring the windmill. As we learned in the Zannse Schans windmills area, windmills are set up to do one job and one job only. All of these windmills in the Kinderdijk area were meant to pump water out of the low lands into a canal to be drained into the ocean.
This museum was meant to show how the millers and their families lived in the windmills while performing their duties. The wind was a nice breeze at about 12 knots today and so that allowed us to get an idea of the type of noise that was generated inside of the windmill while it was working while the family was living there.
This is how you stop a windmill from turning. Pull on a rope, that pulls on an arm, that squeezes wood down on the turning windmill drum. If the windmill is turning too fast you can't slow it down because the friction of stopping it will make the wood catch on fire. That's why the miller's work is never done.
It is so cool to be here with all these windmills
There are many stories as to how the Kinderdijk (Children dike) windmills got their name, but the one they love the most is that there was a baby in a basket floating down the river with a cat balancing on it that they found after a major flood.
Have you ever seen a more iconic picture?
As we approached the second windmill that we could explore and tour, the miller was trimming the sails.
On closer inspection this windmill has stainless steel blades. Around the turn of the century the windmills were replaced by diesel pumps. Diesel was in short supply after the Germans invaded the Netherlands. So the fields still needed to be pumped out and the Germans redesigned the blades of the windmills to be more efficient.
The windmills in this area used blades slapping at the water to move the water 5 feet from the lower canal to the upper canal. As you can see, when the wind speed was up, the paddlewheel did a good job of moving the water.
We were done with all the windmills and the gift shop and a short snack by 3:45 PM. Our water taxi was due to arrive in 15 minutes which gave us just enough time to sit down and relax and contemplate the cool things that we had seen today.
Our ride back to Rotterdam would only take us 30 minutes in the water taxi. Along the way we saw this beauty on the side of the river.
Watching us sail under the bridge in Rotterdam was our son, Brian. He was there to join us on our two week cruise.
We wandered through town along the canal and dock area and finally made it up to the Markel, a huge market, food, cafe, and housing complex.
Rotterdam is home to some really cool architecture
After touring around the dock areas we managed to scramble back inside the Markel during a rainstorm. We attempted to buy some gelato, but the vendor wouldn't take cash and they wouldn't take our American credit cards, so we were almost going to do without. A nice gentleman that we had allowed to go ahead of us, overheard our plight and offered to buy us the gelato if we could reimburse him with cash. Oh joy! We stood and talked with him for a while as we all ate our gelato.
The rain was still coming down as we headed back towards our hotel over by our cruise ship, so we decided to take a tram for a couple of stops that lessened the amount of time that we were going to be out in the rain.
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