Travel Log for Melvin: Day 3 - Kinderdijk, Netherlands

Thursday June 27, 2013

Today the ship arrived at the UNESCO site of Kinderdijk for an excursion to see the windmills. After breakfast I went on a group to see the network of windmills and the ingenious flood management devices at Kinderdijk. The ship had three tour guides and our group first went to view the inside of one of the mills at the site. This included some walking along a path between two canals with one canal being higher then the other canal. The idea was to pump the water from one canal to the other canal and then into a lake or ocean. After the tour of the wind mill we walked back and viewed a modern pumping station and then went to a wood working shop where they still make parts for the wind mills from wood just like they did when they were new. Our last stop was at a pumping station that had been turned into a museum and then we returned to the ship. After we got back, the ship called United about our baggage. It had arrived in Amsterdam and they are sending it to meet the ship in Cologne.

Netherlands is famous for its windmills and the windmills at Kinderdijk are a sample of some of the 150 windmills in the Netherlands used to pump water into reservoirs. Today only 28 windmills exists and 16 are in the Kinderdijk area.

At 11:30 AM the ship left Kinderdijk for Cologne. In the morning and early afternoon I took pictures of the sites along the ship path but in the late afternoon I did not take many pictures.

At 1 PM we had some lunch and at 3:30 PM we had a cup of tea or coffee and enjoyed a variety of cakes in the Viking Lounge.