Vianen to Schoonhoven to Kinderdijk to Dordrecht – May 26/13 – 50 km

In the morning we road about 22 km and ended up just before lunch in the town of Schoonhoven which is renowned for it’s silver and silver smiths. Lucky for me the stores were all closed…….. Not so lucky for Brenda 🙂 We were able to get a wonderful coffee and enjoy our lunch in the town square while listening to the 2 churches in town have a bell competition. They were not just signalling the time they were playing melodies of some sort……. It was beautiful.

For most of the day we were riding in farm land and reclaimed polder land so lots of canals, windmills and pump houses. Lots of wildlife and ducks, geese mixed in with the usual array of farm animals…… Definitely a certain aroma in the air.

Our afternoon bathroom stop was at someone’s farm. The tour guide went to the side door of the farm house and talked to the lady. She then opened a side window that had a counter attached and she and her 2 young children started serving coffee, tea, snacks, etc. They also had a little bathroom off to the side for all to use. Totally unique.

From here we headed towards Kinderdijk which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.   We fought a pretty stiff head wind all the way to Kinderijk and some of our group really were struggling; we are sure happy we did a lot of road miles and head winds back home. At Kinderdijk there are 19 windmills standing in a row in the immediate area, however at one time there were over 400. Unfortunately it was Sunday and the everything was closed. Fortunately for Brenda and I we visited Kinderijk on our last trip to Holland.

The barge was awaiting for us and once we got on board we headed down the river to Dordrecht for the evening.  Evening dinner started with a salad with salmon lox on top and a very light type dressing.   Then we had a white fish with tiny, tiny shrimp on top, rice with julienne carrots on top.   Dessert was a very rich chocolate mousse with chocolate chunks in it……too yummy.

The village tour of Dordrecht this evening included a walk past the city gates from the 15th century and it is the oldest city in the present province of South Holland. The city at one time was occupied by the Spanish and after the 80 year war the Spanish departed and they made William of Orange their leader. That is why today Holland Colours are Orange.

One final building we visited was a Seniors Complex. It was a 4 story building that was covered like a solarium/greenhouse with a courtyard area. On a daily basis various vendors set up stalls where they sell goods, fruits, vegetables, etc to the building residents. The one thing that was surprising was that about the only greenery was a couple of smaller Palm Trees. If this was in Canada we are sure there would have been other flowers, landscaping and brighter colours.