We started our adventures in a town called, Hoorn. It was a base for the Dutch India Company, with lots of industry shipping in and out because of its strategic location. We walked through the town looking at some very interesting buildings that dated back to the 1500s, and reached the shore where we saw the Hoofdtorn, one of the last surviving defensive structures that were very important to Hoorn’s safety before dijks blocked the openness to the North Sea.
On our way to the next town we stopped to look at some more windmills. These ones are quite different than the ones we saw yesterday, instead of working to power production of something like the sawmill, these windmills are used to draw water from the farm fields and divert it to the canals. The farms are low lying land, reclaimed from De Schermer Lake. In the 1630s 52 windmills were needed to drain the lake, and now 11 remain to keep to for farming. We heard that the man who works the windmills actually lives in one of the windmills so he can monitor the water all the time and make sure the farm land never floods.
Alkmaar was the next town we visited. We saw lots of homes and buildings there that gave a real sense of what Dutch life was from years ago.
Well Behaved Kids Travel 