Kinderdijk

I must admit that I never heard of the name Kinderdijk before, but it turns out that it is one of the most visit places in the Netherlands. I remember that when we just entered the Netherlands from Belgium, I saw a solitary Dutch windmill, the ones you see in books and pictures, and that got me very excited. I did know that the Netherlands is famous for their windmills but I didn’t know that they still used them. My impression of windmills are those modern ones used for power generation. Imagine my surprise to know that Kinderdijk is the place to be when you want to see windmills. Not only does Kinderdijk have windmills, they have lots of them. From the outside, we can see that there seemed to be an extraordinary number of windmills here. I guess it is no wonder it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site under the name Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout.

Kinderdijk has a large windmill network and they seem to be in active use. There seems to be an entrance fee here but it was already closed when we got there but we were still able to get in. I guess parts of the it would be restricted to ticket holders only. The place has a feel of a park because I saw several people going for runs. It does seem to be a very nice place to relax. There is a canal here with windmills on both sides. I noticed that some of the windmills would be moving and some do not. There are sails which are unfurled to catch the wind and drive the pump. Some of the windmills have already retracted their sails and aren’t doing anything. I wanted to get a closer look at the windmills but I was having difficulty finding a way to get closer. Some were even closed to visitors after a certain time. I think some people live here. Imagine that!

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