Kinderdijk Was The First Stop On My Viking River Cruise From Amsterdam.
Until my visit to Kinderdijk, the closest I’d been to a windmill was a cellophane-wrapped box of windmill cookies. So when I had the chance to visit a centuries-old working windmill village with Viking River, off I went.
Our riverboat, the Viking Jarl, made an early morning approach into a chilly, fog-shrouded Kinderdijk. The sun was desperately trying to break through the mist. Apparently, an early September in Holland didn’t guarantee a warm, autumn day.
There they stood; 18th century sentinels, keepers of the flood gates. Most people don’t know this but much of Holland is below sea level. Kinderdijk, in particular, is over 20′ below sea level.
When the Dutch finally realized that to live in this low-lying area, something had to be devised to keep the flood waters away. In 1738, the clever Dutch designed eight of the nineteen mills and a series of canals and drainage systems. A successful water management system would alleviate flooding. The remaining eleven windmills were added over the next hundred years.
Read more from source: Viking River Cruise to Kinderdijk and Village of Windmills
