Before we even moved to Germany, I was researching places to visit and making mental notes. It's always been in the back of my mind that we needed to visit Holland in the spring to see the tulips. When I found out Hyrum would be coming home from deployment in April, I realized we might be able to squeeze a trip in while the flowers were still in bloom. And sure enough, the timing worked out perfectly! Check.
It was our first long car trip with Santiago. He wasn't bad! I can't say he was great, because he's a baby, but it was manageable. For part of the trip I sat in the back seat with him, and just having someone to look at, he was happy. I didn't even have to entertain him.
His new favorite toy is a pacifier, which is hilarious to me since he hasn't used one in months. In fact, I started just tying toys to the end of all his pacifier clips. Recently, however, he loves to stick the pacifier in his mouth and chew on it, and pretend he's sucking on it. (Which he's not.) Then he pulls it out, and starts over. Little does he know that most of his peers love those things!
Moving on...
We arrived to the Kinderdijk windmills in the afternoon, with enough time to enjoy the weather and scenery. In reality, though, I was melting and miserable. It was hotter than it looks. But it cooled down, and we spent a few hours walking around. It looked just like I would have imagined and hoped.
There is a short movie they show, which explains how windmills were used to drain land... but it went so quickly that I was left still thinking, "whaaaaaat? Let's see those diagrams again in slow motion." Fortunately, I had my Eyewitness Travel book from the library.
In that book, I also learned that used to be thousands of windmills in the Netherlands, as early as the 13th century, but now there are just over 1000. Kinderdijk has 19.
Also, a word on land reclamation: since the 14th century, the surface area of the Netherlands has increased 10%! And in 2000 they added a new district in Amsterdam, build on a new island. So they say, "God created the earth, but the Dutch created Holland." It's interesting to me to see a whole country adapts and works with what they have. Some areas are 22 ft below sea level!
We were able to go inside one windmill. The pole runs right up through the middle - 3 floors - to the wheel in the attic part. The stairs were very steep, but Hyrum did a good job at holding on to the baby. The blades spin faster than they look, and there was a picture of a family who used to live in the windmill with 13 children--the mother was killed by the turning blade while she was trying to get one of her children out of the way. Dangerous business!
Lucky Tiago. He's been able to enjoy some very beautiful vistas while he eats!
While reading up for our trip, I learned the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Holland is just 2 if the 13 Dutch provinces. And since Holland contains the windmills, Keukenhof, and Amsterdam, I can actually say we were visiting Holland. (But I think our hotel was just in the Netherlands...)
Hyrum is becoming proficient with these jumping pictures.
Next up is Keukenhof... day 2! Beautiful, never-ending flowers. Here's a little preview of our many pictures... I didn't even Photoshop those flowers below; they actually looked like that!
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