I have read “The Hiding Place” a number of times. Corrie ten Boom wrote about life in Haarlem hiding Jews in their home during World War II. She survived concentration camps. If you have never read the book, I highly recommend it.
Chris and I left the train station in Haarlem and walked down Kruiswig (wig = way) to Barteljoristraat. I was just cool walking the streets that I knew Corrie had walked.
While in Haarlem, we also saw the St. Bavokerk Church and took a brief tour.
Outside the church, a "Bubble Guy" started to draw a crowd in the town center.
We made a quick stop at the Visitor Center to get directions to the Molen de Adriann (windmill). It wasn’t too far though we had to endure a little rain along the way.
Ymi was our tour guide at the windmill. She spoke passable English and struggled with a few of the words. We were fortunate in being the only two at the windmill at the time for our tour.
We met the miller, Hugo, and he proceeded to show us the workings of the windmill and the masts. He even climbed up on the arm to put the mill at half mast.
We learned that many messages could be sent by the placement of the arms, and even showing the location of an event by turning the direction the masts faced.
His schooling to become a miller took about five years. He works the mill with 5 or 6 other millers.
Chris was fascinated.
Today the mill grinds chicken meal and delivers it to local farms.
We walked back to the old town and found a cute creperie for lunch. It took longer than expected to make the crepes, so Chris and I quickly ate our salad and got our savory and sweet crepes to go to eat on the train back to Amsterdam.
From the train, we rushed back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and caught our train to the airport in Eindhoven for our flight to Zadar, Croatia.
We arrived at a small airport that offered flights on small discount airlines.
The airport was loaded with people, especially some obnoxious 20-something’s on their way to Croatia for a party weekend. We were grateful they wouldn’t be following us on the rest of our vacation.
Chris found a brand new Hyatt in Zadar that had opened on May 1st. It was beautiful and spacious. Too bad we were only staying one night.