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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Nieuwe Maas and Lek Rivers to Kinderdijk

This morning after breakfast we wandered down to the waterfront and
bought tickets for a boat ride down (or up,I'm not sure which) the
rivers to Kinderdijk (children's dike). The river ride is about an hour
and goes down the Nieuwe Maas (which flows right outside our hotel room
window) pass the Rotterdam skyline and more canals and then goes down
the Lek River. Nice scenery along the way and we were on the outside
top deck so we could see everything. The weather also cooperated as it
was probably in the low sixties.

At Kinderdijk, there are 19 windmills that line the banks of the
canals. Up until the 1950s these were operating mills that operated the
pumps that drained the marshland in the area. Even though they were
retired they still work and have been put on the United Nations world
monument list. The tour is three hours in length and it is an hour each
way on the rivers so we were limited to only an hour seeing the
windmills. Quite a site, though. Pictured is one of the windmills there.

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