Surely you know by now it's one of my most soulful places on earth...and it's only 15 miles from where we live here in Gorinchem, NL.
It's our second time in my 6 Christmases here that we have driven to Kinderdijk, just because we wanted to give ourselves the Gift. The first time was in 2010 when we had snow. This year the snow came two days later...but who knew!
This year we decided to get there in time for the sunrise around 8:30 a.m.
And we did.
There was just a tad of color for a few minutes, but it was enough.
We are familiar now with how the 19 windmills are situated on the bike/walking path
next to the canals, and where the docks are.
next to the canals, and where the docks are.
At one point I did a 360-degree turn-around to show you what we saw from that one spot:
You can even see and hear the wind!
Astrid had fun with her tripod, doing the real serious photography.
We loved following each other around, doing our own thing.
As morning broke, the personalities of the windmills woke up.
People still live in these mills, pumping out the water from the polder.
But there's too much water in this spot, one of the lowest below sea level in Holland.
So at the beginning of the path that leads to the windmills is this massive waterschroef
(water screw/pump), one of Europe's largest, to help with mechanical pumping.
(water screw/pump), one of Europe's largest, to help with mechanical pumping.
It gives you a feel for how much water is being pumped out of the land to the nearby Lek river.
Once we were back in the car, on our way home for Christmas breakfast (!),
the weathervanes showed up. This was CHRISTMAS for us both.
Since then, in these last days, I've manipulated 4 of the images of the day for my photoblog:
An old year is waning....
and still waning.....
And now it's dawning....
to one and all!
