Today we had free time in the morning for the first time. We didn’t leave the hostel until 1 p.m., so I had plenty of time to get more sleep, grab breakfast, and relax. The free time was much needed. For breakfast, I just ate yogurt and cereal at the hostel. Then, at 1 o’clock we headed to the Watersnoodmuseum. The weather was great, and the hour long drive was beautiful.

The museum was amazing getting to walk through the actual dikes, built almost 75 years ago. It also wasn’t what I was expecting because it talked about the flood of 1953 and all the lives lost, which was kind of sad. The Watersnoodmuseum is comprised of 4 dikes that are connected to keep the mainland dry. Each dike had a different theme. For example the first one was “the facts” and the second one was “emotions.” Without the dikes, The Netherlands would flood regularly. This happened multiple times, especially one really bad one in 1953. The disaster was the result of a heavy storm at the same time as the seasonal high tide. There were 1,836 deaths in The Netherlands, 307 in England, 224 at sea, and 28 in Belgium. The storm surge was so strong that it ripped towns apart and took so many lives. We had plenty of time to explore and take in the information. Something notable that I remembered was that throughout the reconstruction phase, numerous countries contributed by donating dozens of pre-fabricated houses to the Netherlands to replace those lost in the flood. These houses still stand in the flood-affected regions of Zeeland, and the museum had a life-sized model of a pre-fab house which was really cool.

I also never knew exactly what dikes were before going to this museum. The Dutch built their dikes by filling neatly stacked pods with water to make them sink and retain water. This was against a core of loose bulk material, and later reinforced by adding an outer wall with a gentler gradiant.

It was amazing learning about this technology because in the U.S. we don’t have as many problems with flooding that the Netherlands has. Florida and Louisiana have some problems with flooding, but they can look to the Netherlands when it comes to solutions. I feel like we also use dams instead of dikes in the U.S..

Once out of the museum, we walked outside along the top of the dike. This was a peaceful and beautiful walk, as the weather was perfect. Something that surprised me is that there were people playing with RC cars outside of the museum. I guess it’s land open to the public, but it was so random and unexpected. Unfortunately, I did get a tick from this walk. It was the smallest tick I’ve ever seen and I had to wait until we got to the hostel to get it out.