DAY 9 / FRIDAY / APRIL 23
KINDERDIJK AND DELFT
OVERNIGHT IN THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS
Experience the Holland you expect from postcards and travel posters at
At Kinderdijk in province of South Holland. You will see nineteen windmills
lined up, the greatest concentration of mills in the country.
Much of The Netherlands is below sea level and the farms and towns are protected by dikes.
These windmills were built to pump water out and keep the farms and towns dry.
At Kinderdijk, the mills from 1740 still run!
The most severe flood in Dutch history dates back to
1421. This flood, called the
"Elisabethsflood", was caused by a
heavy storm and made the dikes break.
The water from the river flushed into the
polders.
According to legend,
a cradle with a child on the waves was kept in balance by a cat and stranded
on the slope of a dike. The spot where this happened was named
Kinderdijk.
The contribution made by the people of "the low countries" to the technology of
handling
water is enormous, and this is admirably demonstrated by the installations in the
Kinderdijk-Elshout area.
Hydraulic works to drain the land for agriculture and settlement began in the Middle Ages
and have continued uninterruptedly to the present day. The site contains all the relevant
elements of this technology: dikes, reservoirs, pumping stations, administrative buildings,
and a series of impeccably preserved windmills.
Windmills of The Netherlands
Rotterdam was largely rebuilt after World War II, when the center of the city and the
port were devastated by German bombers. Nowadays, hardly a month passes by without a
building being finished, a square being completed or a site being cleared for new
development.
Delft, midway between The Hague and Rotterdam, is the quaint town travelers go to Holland
to see: a maze of canals, cobbled alleys, and houses that look like
Johannes Vermeer
(who was born here) painted them.
Delft is almost Venetian with its many canals, except that
they are mostly tree-lined.
Delft claims special ties to the
Dutch Royal House, more so than any other town in
The Netherlands.
The New Church, which dates from 1384 and took a century to build, has for generations
been the burial place of the Royal family. It is renowned for its marble and bronze
monument by Hendrick de Keyser to
William the Silent, "Father of The Netherlands.
At the King's feet rests his pet dog, which refused to eat when his master died.
History of the Netherlands
