Windmills and Windy Days – Day 2

One of the frustrating things about our previous Viking river cruise (beyond the fact that the Elbe River’s water level was too low for the ship to actually cruise, so the trip turned into a bus tour) were the promises made about accommodating people with mobility issues. There were supposed to be “easy” versions of the excursions and a mechanism to reserve the front seat on the buses. Neither of those happened.

This time I made sure to chat with the Program Director, Maarten. He explained that there were indeed “easy walk” versions of most excursions (how I was supposed to know that is unclear), and he promised to sign me up for those.

Also, Day 2’s excursion – visiting a windmill in Kinderdijk (pronounced – “kin – der – dike”) had a version that traveled to the windmill via a vintage barge instead of walking. I had wanted to sign up for that one back in February, but it was sold out. But now apparently there were additional available spots – yay! Sign us up!

The ship stopped briefly in Rotterdam to let off a couple of people who were going on the cheese making excursion – they would meet the ship at at Kinderdijk later. Of course, we had been told that the night before and we all promptly forgot.

We arrived at Kinderdijk right at 10:00 a.m. Our excursion group started the walk to the barge right at 10:15. Our tour guide talked about what exactly a dike is (a pile of clay?), “boezems” (pronounced “buh-zjems”), and “polders” – all parts of the South Netherland water management system that also included the windmills. It was not 100% clear how it all worked, but it seemed to be a sort of canal-like system – boezems and polders are water holding areas at different levels (maybe?) and the windmills pump the water from level to level.

Seriously not clear, but interesting all the same. I was able to do the walk without a problem, yay! We could see the windmills in the distance from the walking path.The barge made its way down the <I have no idea> river.

At least one windmill needs to be operating every day, but others can start up whenever the winds pick up.

The barge made its way down the <I don’t know river> and docked at the windmill we were going to visit.

The top part of the windmill can be rotated by the miller to make sure it faces the wind. The bottom part is where the miler and his family would live. Rather cramped quarters, but they lived there rent free, so they made do.

The guide split the group in half – the group was too big for everybody to fit inside the mill at the same time.

The windmill itself is now run 100% by machines, so the miller doesn’t have to do anything manually.

This is a photo of the vintage barge. Viking chipped in with funding to restore it and it is used solely for Viking river cruise excursions. It’s 100% electric.