On my way from Delft to Eindhoven today, decided an itinerary that mostly took me off the freeways. Very pleased about that. Unfortunately, a very grey old day, so not great for pics but I did my best. Drove through the extremely pleasant village of Harmelen on the way to a castle….lots of tulips, blossoms and canola oil blooming with gorgeous houses lining the very narrow canal roadway….which at times decreased to one lane, requiring cars to ‘give way’ regularly as we drove the route. I loved the calmness of this scene with the little bridge, beginning blossoms and trees still bare but on the edge of being re-leafed…

I wanted to put droney up to take pics of the Castle de Haar, but got a message on the remote control that I needed to register as an operator, apply for a pilot’s license and pass a test at a Dutch flight school – all this despite the fact that when I was last in France, I devoted a good 10 hours, getting all those. I have done an exam with the EU Aviation Safety Agency and qualified for an EU open category licence until September 2028 to fly A1 and A3 drones (over 250g but under 25kgs). Argggh! So droney will stay in its bag until Ireland. Will see what I need to do there. Here is what I potentially could have taken ( thank you to Kastelen Magazine for this image) vs reality…

Loved this little canal view as I was driving on a country road around Krimpen aan de Lek.

And finally saw some real windmills @ Kinderdijk. To get there, had a car ferry experience. I think all PT modes have now been sampled in the Netherlands :).

Veerdam street that leads from the ferry landing, has a very cute collection of renovated dike houses – some examples of window dressing and doorway entrances…

There are 19 windmills – all on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1997; built starting from the end of the 15thC, but the current windmills almost all date from 1738 and 1740. The windmills of Kinderdijk were built to pump water up from the low-lying polder (a low-lying tract of land, often below sea level, enclosed by embankments, that has been reclaimed from bodies of water like the sea, lakes, or marshes). The area, and the surrounding region, was a large peat bog, caught between major rivers. The first farmers settled on the higher-lying banks of glacial sand and clay deposits, called donks. This is where their struggle against the water began. To make this wet, unpassable landscape habitable and fertile, they first dug separate ditches for drainage. Later, they joined forces to build dikes, tilled the peat bogs, and drained away the water via a network of ditches.

On arriving in Eindhoven, saw the Next Nature Museum building, quite the interplanetary spaceship design. It’s been established to show how innovation in the arts, sciences and design are colliding to shape our future. Closed today of course.

Turned the corner and waaah! What is it about Eindhoven? A creepily designed building looking like the squished back end of a huge bug ….or maybe another alien spaceship concept……but discovered it was actually the southern corner of the imposing Philip’s stadium. The neighbourhood is called Philipsdorp, a former factory workers’ village that Philips built for employees.

Caught at the lights during ‘rush hour’, and waiting to proceed for 3 sets of light changes… I focussed on and rather liked this building facade featuring a vibrant mosaic style artwork, with stylised faces and figues in primary colours.