For a country that is so close, we have not given the Netherlands the attention that it deserves. We were nudged to explore more of it when Adrian’s dad and his dad’s wife came to visit us a while back. We stayed the big bright city of Amsterdam and took a day trip to Haarlem. While in Amsterdam, we had lunch at the delicious Pancake Bakery for me, and dinner on a pizza and icecream cruise for Adrian. We visited the wax figures at Madame Tussauds, and I was amused to discover that Adrian had previously thought it was a serious museum of important historical figures.

The next day, we took the train to Haarlem, a delightful and fascinating town just outside Amsterdam. We saw signs to “Molen De Adriaan” and decided to take a detour. We discovered the most delightful windmill, and ventured inside. The woman asked us if we wanted to take a look in the museum upstairs. It was a few euros each, but we decided to splash out. We were astonished and delighted to discover that we had bought a private tour of the entire windmill. Our tour guide was an old man with an extensive knowledge of mills and wind. He told us about the secret signals that the windmills used that were dependent on the orientation of the vanes, how to convert circular motion into up-and-down motion, and even took us all the way to the top.