Friday, May 14, 2010

Visiting the windmills

In Dutch, windmill is windmolen and miller is molenaar.

That's your Dutch lesson of the day!

Schrobbenmaster's parents took us to see the windmills at Schermer the day after their garage sale (and the day after we were playing with our Crocs in the garden). On the way, I snapped photos of the tulips living their short lives in the fields.


It was a really nice day, not too freezing, but as usual, not sunny either. Most of these photos have actually been Photoshopped to make them look less gloomy. Bleh.

However, it really was a nice day by Dutch standards, and judging by the number of people and groups out doing their group activities, we weren't the only ones enjoying the day.


These people were the first of the group activities we saw. I think we saw two or three more groups of riders throughout the afternoon. And after that we saw a whole convoy of about 30 classic vintage cars travelling on a small road in a row. And then we saw a bevy of Porsches and Ferraris parked in a small town called De Pijp, a rich little town near Hoorn. They were apparently gathering for some middle-aged rich people's meeting.

Anyway, back to the windmill...


I think there are 4 in a row, in this section. One of which the miller actually lives in.


We went in to pay our entrance fee and give the customary lookaround the souvenir shop. Then a short movie on the history of windmills and how they work. Nicely done, very brief and stopped before it became boring.

And outside to the actual windmill.


Okay, first to the toilet outside the windmill.


And then some social chatting with the miller.


So I tinkered around with my camera, keeping myself occupied.


The miller was actually wearing clogs at work. Not these fancy ones, but huge (his hands and feet are huuuuge) dirty green plain clogs.

Then finally inside the working windmill (this is not the miller's home, btw).


How could they fit in there?!


And then up, up and up!


Getting a personal tour from the miller. As I couldn't understand him, I just busied myself taking pictures and trying to figure out how it works myself.


Fat from the pigs is used to grease the wheels.



From outside the shop on the other side.

Then we drove to another town to look for some lunch. Ended up in an old whaling town called De Pijp. The early whaling industry did a lot of help to this town, making it very rich. You could tell how rich a town was by if it had a town hall and compare it with the number of inhabitants in the town.


Found a nice restaurant, looked quite swish. There was no place outside so we sat inside. If there's one thing the Dutch can be counted on, it's to sit outside and eat. Even when it started drizzling, only two women got up to move inside. Everyone else kept their asses sat down and challenged the sky.


I hadn't had prawns for so long that I just gave in to ordering this weird concoction. Was really yummy, but I could hardly finish it. Thank God for Schrobbenmaster's expandable tummy and Moeder Irma not liking waste :P


Schrobbenmaster's lunch looked really appetising as well. Mmm, fried egg!

On our way back, we looked at some farm animals.


I only always got their butts in the photo because they were trying to get away from us.


We drove by another field and we saw the adorable sight of a mother horse teaching her foal to walk and run. So sweeeeeet!


Animals are so great!

2 comments:

frachely said...

FV in real life woohoo!!! :P

Mumsy said...

jst like tulip farm in melbourne ..i wanna go to the windmills, n eat rik's fried egg order, it looks yummy