Last but not least

 

The windmills got short-changed on the blog. Our final tour was late afternoon on our last night on the ship. Honestly, windmills and wooden shoes sounded like a cliche, along the lines of the cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest. Expectations were low. We were tired. 

 

But a pleasant surprise was ahead when the ship docked adjacent to Kinderdijk, a UNESCO World Heritage site. A charming local college student studying cultural history led the tour.

 

This is the place to see real working windmills and discover the history of windmills. For 700 years the people of the Netherlands have used windmills to claim their land from the sea.

 

We all know this, but seeing them up close and personal was exciting. Some of us climbed the steep ladders to watch the giant wooden gears and sails at work. 

 

People still live in these old windmills, paying a small amount of rent. The guide said most commute to other jobs, and there's a ten year waiting list to live at Kinderdijk. 

 

Generation after generation of millers worked these machines. They had big families in the old days, like this photo showing a rather unhappy looking bunch. Why are those young children bald? 

The windmill base had a room for eating, sleeping and a stove for heat. The cook house was outside, as was the outhouse. They grew their own food. 

The main room had a single cupboard type bed, maybe 4 feet by 3 feet, where the parents slept in a semi-reclined position. The kids got the floor. You wonder how they managed to have so many?

It all looked horribly uncomfortable, but in medieval cultures, lying perfectly flat was considered deeply unhealthy. People associated the horizontal position with death and believed it could cause the soul to leave the body or allow bodily humors to pool. 

OK, then. Kind of like sitting on a plane for 9 hours. 

Speaking of sleep, east to west is the tough jet lag. We boarded the plane mid afternoon, and landed in Seattle at about the same time of day. The sunlight never changed outside the window. By then, we had been up about 24 hours. 

The last two nights I fell into an exhausted sleep early, then wide awake up at midnight, my body positive it was morning.  

But all is well. We are well. And happy to be relaxing at home in cool and rainy Seattle.