Today we went to Kinderdijk, which is about 40 minutes from Gouda, to see and learn about windmills. In that specific area there are 19 windmills (the 20th one is long gone), dating back to 1740, that were used to do "water management" - aka pumping and moving water around to prevent flooding. Families even today live in some of them, and apparently there is also a waiting list. The tour guide said that to be eligible they need to take a 2 year course, and have to commit to running the windmill for a specific number of revolutions every year. We also got to tour one of them, which gives you an idea of what it is like to live there. Pretty tight quarters for sure.
The guide also said that during the winter the canals would freeze, and people would be able to ice skate all over the place, but the last time they wee able to do that was 2012.
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