FRIDAY, 3 MAY 2013

WINDMILLS, WINDMILLS, & MORE WINDMILLS & A TEMPLE

One of the places Jim wanted to visit is Kinderdijk, a UNESCO site that has a bunch of old windmills. We originally thought we would go on Saturday or Sunday because the weather forecast was better than for Friday. However, Jim woke up to sunshine and blue sky, showered, then woke me up and we headed to Rotterdam. We got to the train station just in time to see the train to Rotterdam pull away…we had to wait half an hour for the next one. Everything we read told us to travel to Kinderdijk via metro and bus, but the lady at the TI told us to take the Water Bus. We had to walk about a mile to get to the river to catch the Water Bus. We just missed one and had to wait half an hour for the next one. It was a 40 minute boat ride, then a 30 minute walk to the windmills. These windmills were used to drain the land. They line a canal, and today most of them are private homes. The thatching around them is amazing.

Once we were done, we walked back to the boat dock. It was pretty warm and the walk was not overly pleasant since we didn’t have enough water. The good news is, we only had to wait five minutes for the boat.

Three other places we have on our list were Delft, The Hague, and the LDS temple in Zoetermeer, east of The Hague. I originally had them listed as a separate day trip, but they are on the way back to Haarlem, and since we found ourselves with time we decided to stop today, and open up another day to see something else. Delft is another cute town like Utrecht.

Why Dutch people are not overweight. These are bikes at the train station 

There really wasn’t anything we wanted to see in Den Hague, but we stopped there in order to take the train to Zoetermeer to see the LDS temple. It was about ¾ of a mile from the train station. One thing surprising about the temple grounds is the fact there is no fence surrounding it. After a few quick pictures we walked back to the station to catch the train “home.”

Back in Haarlem we stopped at a Surinamese/Indonesian restaurant and split a roti wrap with chicken curry. It was delicious and reminded us of food we had when we were in Trinidad.