Our Little Blog Spot: The Netherlands

You have seen the pictures from the Keukenhof now here are the rest. It was pretty busy weekend with several stops.

Our first stop was to the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margarten, NL. We try to stop at as many American cemeteries overseas as we can. Our philosophy is if we don't stop and pay pour respects who will?

The Netherlands Cemetery has 8,301 brave men buried there and another 1,722 names of the missing inscribed on a tablet that runs along the reflection pool. The weather was horrible that day it was cold, windy and damp so a lot of the pictures are dark.

Next stop was Kinderdijk and this was my favorite stop of the weekend. It is a small town with 19 operational windmills that date back almost 300 years. These windmills were used to drain water from the land and to help prevent flooding. We are able to tour a windmill and see how it operates and exactly how it works. I learned quite a bit from this for example I did not know the top of windmills could be turned so that the sails could catch the optimal wind to ensure efficiency in the way they work. It was very interesting. The downer part was we got caught in a nasty storm while out walking through the field of windmills. It hailed on us!!!

To top off this section of our trip we stopped in a little cafe which had am amazing view of the windmills fields. We were able to warm up with probably the best cup of hot cocoa I think I have EVER had.

This is what the back of a windmill looks like. You turn that wheel and it causes the entire top of the windmill to move so that is can catch optimal wind.

After the storm passed we were able to catch a glimpse of a rainbow:

After a long day of sightseeing we topped off our day with a trip to the beach. This was the kids and Paul's favorite part of the trip. Scheveningen is a beach resort town located in the Hague part of the Netherlands.