Wonderful Waffle Weekend: Holland

 

Holland is a region of The Netherlands.  We drove there on Monday morning to visit Kinderdijk.  I wanted to get there early, as I had read that the sight can get crowded by midday, and we had other plans for the afternoon.  It was a gray morning, but was great to pull right in, easily park, and be on our way to visit the windmills. I was shocked to learn that these windmills are still mostly inhabited!  People live out here!  Some are only able to reach their homes by boat or bike.

 

Kinderdijk means children's dike and the story goes that during the flood of 1421 the area was washed out.  When the storm had subsided, a villager went to the dike to see what could be salvaged. In the distance he saw a wooden cradle floating on the water. As it came nearer, he saw it move, and upon closer investigation, a cat was found. The cat was seen in the cradle trying to keep it in balance by jumping back and forth so that no water could get into it. As the cradle eventually came close enough to the dike for a bystander to pick up the cradle, he saw that a baby was quietly sleeping inside it, nice and dry. The cat had kept the cradle balanced and afloat.

 

Everyone had to try on the giant wooden shoes and didn't believe me that people actually wore wooden shoes.

 

Called "Klompen," wooden shoes or clogs kept the Dutch feet drier than leather shoes which quickly became soggy in the wet climate.

 

Of course these weren't the right fit.

 

But Toby tried to walk around in them anyway.  We next visited the Nederwaard windmill behind Toby in this photo.   The Hoek family used to live here with their 13 children!  It is now set up as a museum to show visitors how this large family lived here around 1900.

 

The kids loved that Rob was tall enough to reach out and touch the spinning blade as it went by from outside the safety barrier.  I was less thrilled when we learned that the mother of the Hoek family was killed by these when she rushed to rescue one of her children, leaving her husband to rear the large family alone.

 

The stairs inside are much more like ladders, the ceilings are low, the gear work exposed, and the beds teeny tiny.  The younger children mostly slept on the floor, and though there were a few toys (a doll, dominoes, a boat) it is clear to see that the children would have spent most of their time playing outside in all sorts of weather.

 

It was hard for me to imagine feeding a family in this kitchen, especially with no electricity.

 

And this is the living room/dining room!  It is very lovely for two people, maybe three, but thirteen?!?

 

Jake absolutely loved seeing the gears inside and watching the windmill work. I think this would be a unique but dangerous and difficult way to live.

 

The kids all loved getting close to the water and looking for fish.  We also talked about being able to ice skate on the canals in Winter and how fun that must have been.

 

Next, we walked back to the gift shop to buy some trinkets and some stroopwaffels for a mid-morning snack.

 

And then boarded a boat to tour the canals from the water and see all of the 19 windmills.

 

Our last stop at Kinderdijk was the tiny museum about how windmills (and mills in general) work and then we were ready to head out.

 

Rob and I agreed that this was a neat place, but we would never want to live here.  It is so incredibly flat and wet.  Part of what I love about travel is the feelings of gratitude I come home with for the time and place that I do live in.

 

Our next stop for the day was near the town of Gouda.  I was super excited about this.  I found a family run cheese farm called Kaasboerderij Jongehoeve that offers tours, and we were going to see how Gouda cheese is made!  I made many cheesy puns.  We arrived and the kids immediately ran over to this sunken trampoline and tree swing to play.  I warned them, clearly, to stay away from the edge of the canal.

 

Two minutes later, Jake is climbing out of the canal completely soaking wet!

The canal was covered in this green algae, and he didn't even realize it was water.  He thought it was a "playground surface" and tried to run across it.  He was clearly fine, though very upset, and Rob and I both busted out laughing.  We stripped him down right there and wrung as much water out of his clothes as we could since we had nothing else for him to wear, and I was not going to miss the cheese farm tour! We left his shirt off, and just had him wear his jacket (which was dry) zipped up for the rest of the day.  He was not happy about the wet clothes, but did see the humor in his falling in the water at least.  Poor Bear, he likes to learn things the hard way sometimes.

 

The other kids were unfazed by all the commotion and visited with the friendliest farm cat ever.

 

Finally, it was time for our tour!  The cheese shop smelled great!

 

Our tour guide was the house Oma. She and her husband had been living and farming here for their entire 45 year marriage and had recently handed the reins to their son.  Now, she says, they just volunteer. We watched a short video on an ancient TV, and then she walked us through each step of the process.  Here she is showing the kids how they apply wax, turning the cheese each time to do the other side. They make only Gouda cheese here, but many varieties- young, old, and with herbs and spices.

 

The cows here were the largest I have ever seen in my life! And I'm not a total stranger to cows, so I was really surprised by their size.

 

Brand new Gouda, just starting to dry! Oh we seriously love cheese in this family.

 

Back in the shop, at the end of our tour, we sampled ALL of the types of Gouda.  Another shopper came in and couldn't believe how excited our kids were about cheese. Then we bought about two kilos, and some mustard, to take home.  Our very next stop though was a store in tow so we could buy some bread rolls and make cheese sandwiches for a late lunch.  The cheese was so good-ah.

 

Our final stop for the day was to drive through Rotterdam to see the Cube Houses there.  Designed in 1979, these houses are supposed to optimize living space, but I just don't see how that works.  They are novel though, and while the trend clearly hasn't caught on on a larger scale in the past 40 years, they were neat to see in person as a very short detour on our route back to Antwerp.

 

Arriving back in Antwerp earlier than expected, we thought we might have time to visit Middelheim Park.  There is an open air sculpture museum here that was on my maybe list. There are hundreds of sculptures here, but sadly, they are closed on Mondays.  Bummer.  We walked around other areas of the park though and just enjoyed the quiet, gray day.  That might not sound fun to you, but for introverted Rob and I, this was a perfect quiet end to the day.

 

We stumbled across an awesome playground in front of a posh restaurant and let the kids play for a while.  We considered having dinner  here, but you might remember, we had a kid who smelled like a canal.

 

So after some playground fun we headed back to our hotel.  While I cycled kids through the shower and into jammies, Rob went out in search of dinner.  He came back with burgers from 5 Guys which we enjoyed while watching cartoons and discussing our quick weekend in Belgium and The Netherlands.  It was a fun trip!  We had been feeling lately like our "travel mojo" was missing and this trip feels like it got us back on track.  We're looking forward to our next adventure.