Today’s early wake up at 7:00 am was a tough one. I grabbed a quick breakfast and we were on our way to the Zuiderzeemuseum, which was not close at all. We explore a small historic village that used to be centered completely around fishing. When we got there we took a quick ferry to where this village was and began exploring. This village was not the biggest and I noticed that when I came up to one of the first houses. It was probably as wide as a standard bedroom and it had two floors, yet a family of nine managed to live there. Later on I found another building that was used by one family to keep their cattle in during the winter seasons but when it became warm out and the cattle were able to go back outside the family would move in. This was because the house had very small windows which helped keep the house cool during hotter days.  At the coast I found this lookout tower with a cool mirror on top. It gave us a cool vantage point of the land behind us and the open waters where you could see many boats floating. I didn’t find any information on it so I am assuming it was recently built.

Walking around I learned more about life here in the small village. Fishing was the lifestyle for the people here and it wasn’t always smooth sailing (no pun intended). Dikes were placed to protect the village from floods during storms and tides. The water flow into the little canals was always regulated. There was one shed where tools were kept to maintain these dikes when necessary. It was pretty cool to walk into a shop where the sails were made for the ships. Closer to the water was a shed where you were able to test your ability to work around these ships. You had to lift up these weights and that would have been used to test your strength whether you were fit to work or not. There was another place that would take fishing nets and apply a protective coating on them. The nets were dipped in this liquid for a couple days and it would help make the net more durable and last longer. Walking around you noticed that fishing is what kept this town alive and it gave something for the town to do. Not only did it give them a source of food but they were got people who needed to cook the fish, sell them, fix and build the ships. 

I had the chance to walk onto some of these old ships. Stepping on there was no creaking at all, all the wood is firmly held together which is astonishing. After all the years they have been built they are still able to float in water and maintain its structural integrity. The fact that they were able to construct such strong and sophisticated ships is truly unbelievable.

First full day in Rotterdam is finished, tomorrow we start off with a late start. I’ll see ya then