Leiden, Netherlands

Day 2 of our Holland adventure started out with Uncle Lamar graciously offering to take us to the town of Leiden. Our first stop was at Molen De Valk. "Molen" is the Dutch word for windmill, and "De Valk" is falcon. 

There were once 19 windmills built on the city walls of Leiden, but De Valk is the only one standing today. It was built in 1743 after replacing it's wooden predecessors that had been built in 1611 and 1667.

It was built to mill grains. The miller actually lived here with his family in the bottom two floors. 

It was briefly used as an observation post by the Dutch military in 1940, and still has bullet holes in some of the walls.

After visiting the windmill, we decided to head into old town Leiden. First stop, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities).  It actually houses the Egyptian temple, the Temple of Taffeh, which was taken apart in Egypt and reconstructed in the museum. The Temple of Taffeh was built in the 1st century AD and was given as a gift from Egypt. 

The museum also had collections from ancient Greece, Rome and prehistoric, Roman and medieval Netherlands. 

We also took a little stroll through town, crossing over a beautiful canal. We parked next to this little canal, twice. The first time was on purpose, the second time was due to a GPS error. (We drove around town and back to where we started. Thanks GPS!)

We toured the Pilgrim's Museum. The Pilgrim Museum was particularly interesting because it was a home that was built somewhere between 1365-1370. A lot of the homes on the street were built at that same time. The street looked a lot like the picture above (minus the canal). It boggled my mind to think that this building has been standing for almost 650 years. 

The museum tells the stories of the founders of New England. I had forgotten that many pilgrims had fled to the Netherlands for a time, and I'm sure that if I would have had the time, I could have found information about some of our ancestors here. It you want to read more, click here. 

So that I don't bore you further with any more details, here's a collage of some of the highlights from our day in Leiden, which is code for "pictures that mostly turned out".