The Netherlands is situated on the coast
of the North Sea, bordering Germany to the east and Belgium to the south. Dutch is the official language, though many
people are fluent in English and German.
Major religions are Roman Catholic (34%) and Protestant (25%). We visited Willemstad, Kinderdijk, and
Nijmegen.
WILLEMSTAD
The little fortified town of Willemstad,
in the southern part of the Netherlands, is nearly surrounded by water. William of Orange gave the order in 1583 for
construction of a star-shaped fortress with 7 bastions, 2 gates and a regular
street layout within. The town is now
known for this excellent example of 16th century fortification
architecture.
Our ship docked with a great view of the town. Here it’s possible to see the embankments
that made up the original fortress around the town. The only entrance to town was by water, but
today there’s also a narrow road parallel to the canal. We walked into town to visit the main points
of interest.
Just
inside the wall, there’s a large marina, most of the town’s buildings, and a
windmill. Much of the town’s income
derives from the marina, since yacht owners can dock their boats here for much
less money than in bigger cities.
The windmill, known as d’Orangemolen (or Orange
Mill), is a white-washed windmill, dating from 1734. It was used for grinding wheat to make flour,
but now has been restored and transformed into a most unusual residence.
The Old Town
Hall, built in 1587, now houses a museum.
As the only ‘official’ building in the town, it was used for just about
everything – court of law, weddings, storage of birth and death records.
From the Old Town Hall, there is a tree-lined “Wedding Walk” in the median strip of
the main street, which leads to a domed church at the other end.
The Keopelkerk (or Reformed Church) is an octagonal building that was the first church built in the Netherlands for a protestant congregation. It was completed in 1607. In the Netherlands, a protestant church can be identified by the cock on top of the steeple (Catholic churches have a cross on top).
Behind the church, the
Prisenhof of Mauritshuis was built in 1623 as a
hunting lodge for Prince Maurits of Orange.
It is now the “new” Town Hall and home of the Tourist Information office.
The day of our visit, preparations were
underway for a wedding to be held there.
Throughout town, there are still quite a few canals,
remnants of the past. Today, they’re
more decorative than functional.
After our ‘official’ tour, while most folks headed
back to the ship, we climbed to the top of the town wall and walked around the
seven-pointed star. These folks do a
great job of supporting physical activity – in most areas, there were two
trails: one for walkers on top of the wall and one for bikers at the base of
the wall. Here is a shot of one of the
old pumping stations – the picture was taken from the bike trail, but the
walking trail is visible above the building.
Walking around the embankment, we admired backyard
gardens and chatted with other walkers and saw again what we’d seen on the
earlier tour (it’s a VERY small town).
But … when we got back around to the windmill and marina area, we sure
had a surprise – a herd of sheep grazing, seemingly unaware of the walking
trail or the view beyond.
After a relaxing (though somewhat damp)
morning, we headed back to the ship for lunch, while the Captain set sail for
Kinderdijk.
KINDERDIJK
Kinderdijk is a small village known for its windmills,
which date from the 1700s. These were
used to drain water from low-lying areas, a function now performed by a pumping
station with giant water screws. The
name Kinderdijk, which means “child’s dike,” came from a legend about a baby
who washed up here in a cradle after a flood.
Windmills were critical in reclaiming flooded
land. A dike was built around a large
area of water; windmills then were used to pump water out. These newly created pieces of land are called
polders – reclaimed land that can be used for farming or other purposes. Just 150 years ago, there were 10,000 operating
windmills across the Netherlands. Today
only 1,000 remain, as most of the heavy work has been taken over by mechanical
pumps.
The 19 windmills at Kinderdijk have been saved from
the wrecking ball and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are 8 stone-brick windmills built in
1738, 8 thatched windmills built in 1740, 2 stone windmills built in 1760, and
one from 1521 restored in 2000. All are
inhabited by families that operate and maintain them. We toured on foot and by boat.
One of the windmills was open for visiting. A walk through the interior of a working
windmill gives some insight into how the millers and their families lived. It wasn’t an easy life – space was limited,
only the bottom floor was heated, and families were often quite large (10-12
children was the norm). They grew their
own food and did a lot of fishing.
Every windmill has two doors. Because the blades are always facing the wind
and the wind direction varies, the blades might be running in front of the
door. To avoid decapitation, every
windmill has two doors on opposite sides.
The top floor of the windmill is not fixed – it can be
rotated a full 360 degrees, as needed to catch the wind. Long wooden braces are used to hold the top
in place. The four blades can have a
sail stretched over them to capture more wind.
These windmills were used only for pumping water. Every windmill can have only one purpose –
all the power generated from the wind is used to move the water or do the
grinding or sawing.
In spite of intermittent showers and lots of wind,
this was one of our favorite stops on the trip!
Later, after we dried off, we
enjoyed Dutch Night in the restaurant and listening to Karel, the ship’s
onboard musician. He’s a very talented
fellow – plays keyboard and accordion and sings, too. He even brought his accordion out on the
gangplank to play a tune to welcome us back on board.
NIJMEGEN
Nijmegen, the oldest city in the
Netherlands, is situated on a range of hills near the River Waal. The Romans built a military camp here in the
1st century BC, and the city celebrated its 2000th
birthday in 2005. The location had
strategic value because of the surrounding hills, which gave a good view over
the Waal and Rhine valley.
Our ship docked here for a side trip to the
Kroller-Muller Museum, which is home to art that was collected in the early
1900s by Helene Kroller-Muller. She
donated her entire collection to the Dutch government on the condition that it
build a museum on her estate, which is now a national park.
Happily, her favorite artist was Vincent van
Gogh. She acquired 91 paintings and
nearly 200 works on paper by Van Gogh – the world’s largest collection of his
works, except for the Van Gogh family collection.
The museum has works by many other artists – Millet,
Picasso, Cezanne, for example. There’s
also a large sculpture garden with works by world famous artists such as
Auguste Rodin. We liked one named “Two
Adjacent Pavilions” by Don Graham: two
phone booth structures made of one-way mirrors.
Not sure what he was thinking, but it was fun to stand inside and watch
the crazy tourists posing for pictures in the mirror.
After the museum outing, there wasn’t much time for
visiting the town of Nimegen. But … some
of our group had high hopes about visiting one of Holland’s famous coffeehouses
and Nimegen was the last chance for that experience. Finding the coffee house wasn’t hard – too
bad it was Sunday and the shop was closed.
Maybe next time …
We left Nimegen in time for lunch on board, looking
forward to a relaxing afternoon of sailing.
And we did relax, but there was still plenty to do on a Sunday
afternoon. The kitchen crew set up an
ice cream station in the lounge – who could resist a hazelnut ice cream sundae?
Later we enjoyed a wheelhouse visit with Captain
Martin and First Officer Pieter. The
Captain explained who does what and how various instruments are used to
navigate and to communicate with other vessels.
An excellent dinner in the ship’s
restaurant was followed by a meeting of the Liars Club. Our program directors outdid themselves at
telling tall tales, only one of which was actually true.
No comments:
Post a Comment