Day 3

Today we said good-bye to the Lusthof – it was a nice place to stay (from the couple days that Alvar and I were there for anyway!). We were all packed and ready to go fairly early in the morning, we still had some sight seeing to do on the way to De Verrekijker. We began by stopping by the apartment in Delft where Alvar was born in, and were there for a year before moving here to Canada.

Apartment where Alvar was born

We also drove thru a town called Gouderak and took a very tiny ferry (it only fit two cars on it!) It was a very steep decline to get to the ferry, and then another very steep incline to get off of it! And since our van was so big – the bar at the back of the ferry couldn’t go down! I’ll have to admit I was a little nervous about it, but lucky for us it was a warm day, so a little swim probably wouldn’t have been too bad!

The 'teeny-tiny' ferry

The next town we drove thru was Polsbroekerdam – this is where Alvar’s older brother was born, very quiet, cute little place! We enjoyed a snack in that town at the “Kwakel” restaurant and Bianca and I took advantage of the little playground behind the café as well. We enjoyed the teeter-totter but decided to stay away from the slide as it was made out of wood with lots of splinters (ouch!!).

Just a nice picture of the canal in Polsbroekerdam

De Kwakel

From there we left for de Verrekijker in Bergharen. Now, we were all very excited about moving to this accommodation – simply for the fact that we would be staying in a windmill. We thought the pictures looked pretty neat on the internet, giving us a glimpse of what this place was going to be like, but the pictures didn’t do it justice. We could have never imagined how AWESOME this place was going to be! It totally exceeded our expectations. The outside was beautiful, surrounded by trees and walkways (a lot of them used for horses), it was like being in a little forest!

Our Windmill

There was also a church behind the windmill, a Catholic one, outdoors – and they still held masses there on Saturday night! We did watch a little bit of the service the next night, the service was packed full of people (who mostly showed up on their bicycles too).

The Church behind the windmill

But, back to the windmill! We were like kids in a candy store when we got inside, exploring around, and running up and down the stairs seeing what each floor looked like. Choosing our rooms for the week, seeing where we would eat…even the bathroom was pretty cool! I’ll work from the bottom to the top – when you walk in, there’s a large welcoming room with a table surrounded by chairs, an area for the computer, laundry facilities off to the side, two rooms with stairs off to the side of these rooms with more rooms.

The main floor

Then you go up the stairs to the second floor, the kitchen. It came with everything, stove, fridge, dishes, pots, pans, dishwasher, coffee maker etc, etc. Nice table to sit at as well, it followed the curve of the windmill and everything! Also a bathroom with a really deep tub to relax in, tastefully decorated too.

The kitchen/dining room

The next set of stairs takes you up to the lounge room, couches and comfy chairs were up there, along with a television set too. We spent most of our evenings up here, reading books or playing games or just sitting around talking.

The lounge

Another set of stairs (the windmill is also getting narrower, therefore the stairs becoming steeper) brought Alvar and me up to our room. Beautiful room (if we did say so ourselves!), four-poster bed, cathedral ceilings (with wooden beams), bookcase with books on it and everything! Finally, the last set of really steep stairs brought you up to the last bedroom, very cute room, nice and high up, great view from the windows!

Our room

So this was our new home for the next week. We most certainly got our exercise over the course of the week – between all the walking from sight-seeing, and the climb up to our room at the end of the day – we now have “calves of steel”!! We also became very organized coming downstairs each day, making double sure we didn’t forget anything as it wasn’t just a quick couple stairs to get back to our room (65 steps to the very top, thankfully we were one floor down, but that was still about 50 steps each time!).