We remained docked in Rotterdam for the night and it was lovely to see the lights of the city.
At 07:00 the next morning, we sailed for just an hour and came to Kinderdijk, a place where Trevor and I had visited on our previous cruise from Basel to Amsterdam. As we had been on a guided tour of the village of windmills just 10 days earlier and, that the village was across the road from the dock, he and I ambled across the road to see a few things we had not before.
Unaware that, as unaccompanied pedestrians, we were supposed to enter the village from the other end, we simply ‘followed the crowd’. It didn’t seem to concern anyone though. This time, we walked to the far end of the first road where were able to see almost all of the 44 windmills and then made our way around to the 2nd, larger souvenir shop which we had missed last time. It was much bigger than the one we had shopped at previously and much more expensive. This was probably because it was more accessible to visitors than the other to which our previous guide had directed us. We were pleased to discover that we had been lucky with our purchases.
Up the ramp from this shop was the modern pump station with the very large Archimedes Screws. They were in action when we got there and so stood and watched them pumping up the water for a while. It was most interesting. We continued up the road and it was here that we realised that it was where we should have entered originally. At the top was a very large souvenir shop with a much bigger variety of goods on offer. We were able to buy socks with windmills on them for 2 little boys, and they were delighted when they received them on our return.
During the afternoon we sailed on to the port of Nijmegen but remained on board. We stopped just long enough to allow some passengers who had been on another tour for the day to return. During the night we continued to the dock of Xanten where we would stay while we visited Wesel, Germany where we were unable to dock for a full day.
